Bought this player a couple weeks ago online on back says may not be able to play mainstream movies. Why? Thats why I bought it:( using Power DVD wont play blu-rays on computer. It says on back to visit a webpage and guess what page doesnt exsist. Im opionion its just another example of how this current government is letting imports from corporation pass into this country without any restrictions. It burns blu-ray media fine but BD-R doent play on all players isnt that great:(Sony BWU200S DVD+/-RW Blu-ray Disc Serial ATA (SATA) Drive

I traded a good working Lite-On Blu-ray burner for this one because it can record 4x (with the right media) and can burn dual layer (with the right media). I archive video clips to Blu-ray disc and this burner is the hub of my archive workflow, so speed and capacity are important. So far the Sony 200S works great. The only annoying thing was having to download an updated software file from Sony in order to play commercial Blu-ray discs. Why didn't Sony just include that software on the driver disc in the first place, like Lite-On did? My first attempt at the download didn't work until I contacted Sony for help (at least they have help). After the second attempt, the download worked fine and now plays commercial Blu-rays.

Aside from writing data Editing software does not handle AVCHD files at all. Pinnacle studio 11 just freezes and goes away. Maybe Sony's Vega would work better, but at that price $1000 and more!!!

Excellent product. Copies movies (decode to write)in 14 minutes and makes perfect copies. Works very well with Blu-ray and DVD media. Quite impresssed with this unit. Would recommend it to everyone in the market for a Blu-ray burner. On the pricey side, but worth it.

I purchased this item earlier this month and installed it in an external SATA case (which I had to jerry-rig because 5.25" eSATA enclosures aren't generally available yet). I have been VERY pleased with its performance! I've used it with both my PC (4G RAM, Athlon processor, Gigabyte motherboard) running XP Pro (SP2)and with my dual-G5 PowerMac. So far I haven't burned any BD disks (that will come when I get material that requires it), but the drive has performed flawlessly in burning (and reading) DVD's and CD's.

I'm not sure why Sony decided to make this a SATA drive instead of a standard ATA/IDE drive, as other DVD and BD recorders have been. Perhaps it was necessary to improve its speed on BD recording over 1st generation burners, but in the short run it limits the machines that can accommodate it. Be that as it may, the competitive price and improved performance (especially on DVD and CD recording) compared to other BD recorders makes this a great investment.

I did notice that I cannot simply "hotswap" the drive without freezing the computer; rather, I have to reboot and plug it in before the BIOS scans the SATA channels in order to have it accepted by the system. This is a relatively minor hassle, though, so I still give the drive 5 stars.