Pioneer Blu-ray Writers No Longer Available. What are best alternates?

[NewTwoVideo]

Pioneer Blu-ray Writers are No Longer Available. What are the best alternates?

TIA.

[mail2tom]

I've been using an OWC Mercury Pro 16X (external USB) which has an LG WH16NS40 drive (available on Amazon). The combo drive/enclosure is cheaper than the drive alone (go figure). It's been reliable through thousands of disks.

[ozymango]

Far as I know, LG stopped making Blu-Ray drives in 2024, Pioneer stopped in May of this year, but you can still find them for sale until the stock runs out. So stock up on blu-ray drives now! I think Sony still makes them, so check out Sony if you really need to have a current model. But blu-ray seems to be going the way of VHS -- everybody's moving to streaming media, and/or recording their own videos to non-blu-ray media, so fewer people are buying discs, so fewer people are buying blu-ray drives, and so it goes.

I have an LG blu-ray drive on one of my computers, and I installed it five years ago, and I have used it precisely one time since then. I just put everything on spinner and SSD drives and record/play with pretty much no DVDs or blu-ray discs any more.

[Subtitles]

I have LG WH16NS40 Blu Ray drive. It is internal drive but since I don't have a 5.25" bay in my new PC case, I made it work as an external drive using special cabling. I don't like standalone external Blu Ray drives they don't look as reliable as the internal ones.
I thought I will never buy any Blu Ray discs but I bought a German show Box set last month that I couldn't get using streaming because of my location.
I hardly use the drive but it is good to know that it is there.

[pchan]

Asus BW-16D1HT is still available.

[pchan]

Asus BW-16D1HT and Verbatim (slim version) are still available.

[NewTwoVideo]

Thank you and Happy New Year.

Has anyone tried LG VINPOWER WH16NS58DUP ?

[Subtitles]

Thank you and Happy New Year.

Has anyone tried LG VINPOWER WH16NS58DUP ?

It is way too expensive.

[NewTwoVideo]

I have LG WH16NS40 Blu Ray drive. It is internal drive but since I don't have a 5.25" bay in my new PC case, I made it work as an external drive using special cabling. <snip>

When you wrote "special cabling" do you mean an eSATA port on the computer and a SATA to eSATA cable ?

Or do you mean one of the USB 3.0 to SATA adapters that are commonly sold?
If so, which one do you use because the ones I have seen all indicate that they can only provide 2 amps power total and many of the Blu-ray writers seem to need around 2 Amps on the 12VDC lines plus an additional 1 A on the 5 VDC lines.

TIA

[Subtitles]

I have LG WH16NS40 Blu Ray drive. It is internal drive but since I don't have a 5.25" bay in my new PC case, I made it work as an external drive using special cabling. <snip>

When you wrote "special cabling" do you mean an eSATA port on the computer and a SATA to eSATA cable ?

Or do you mean one of the USB 3.0 to SATA adapters that are commonly sold?
If so, which one do you use because the ones I have seen all indicate that they can only provide 2 amps power total and many of the Blu-ray writers seem to need around 2 Amps on the 12VDC lines plus an additional 1 A on the 5 VDC lines.

TIA

Please read this
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/412555-External-Blu-Ray-Drive-for-a-New-PC-Case-wi...out-a-5-25-Bay
Post #24 gives you more details.