Another Beginner Recommendation Request

[second childhood]

I would like folks' recommendations, I want to buy an Internal BluRay Burner. I am a total novice about things BluRay and burning technology. I do understand PCs though.
I have tried to read/look at most of the recent [2011-2012] recommendations & reviews[on other sites too].
I'm sure I missed some. Unfortunately I couldn't find much on current models.

Here are my requirements:
Internal BluRay Burner that has speeds that are common this year and will burn B-R, B R-DL, B-RE and maybe B-RE-DL.

Two main tasks:
Copy/BU Blu Ray Movie Disks [3D if possible too].
Back-up D/L Blu Ray Movies
BU Data.

Priced around $125 USD or less[If $60-80 burners are recommended that won't make me sad].
I am willing/expect to purchase software for ripping,burning,playing Blu-Rays so if the SW included with Burner is weak, that is OK.
I have a DVD burner, so I don't expect I will use the DVD capabilities of the Blu-Ray burner.

I have a Panasonic BluRay Player DMP-BDT320 Integrated Wi-Fi 3D & a 3D TV. I want to play movie copies I make on that player.

I have both Windows 7 SP1 installed and Mac OSX Lion[10.7.4] installed in my Hackintosh PC [Intel i5-650, 8GB RAM, 700w power supply].
I prefer to use the Mac system but if OSX software can't meet my requirements I am willing to buy and use Windows SW.

In addition, if folks can tell me which Slysoft software products I need, that will help me get started too.
If there is other sw I need in addition to the Slysoft apps please tell me about that too.
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I have seen mention of new BluRay encryption that is now being included in some movie discs and some burners.
Does that mean that I should stay away some burners to be able to copy Blu Ray & maybe 3D?
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I also saw an catalog entry for the Pioneer BDR-207DBK that has BDXL support. I know BDXL discs are very costly now, but know that someday I will want to use the 100GB ones.
Is there any decryption/encryption associated with that burner that suggests I should stay away from it for now?

[SmegHead]

I have only ever used LG Blu-ray recorders, but have found them extremely reliable - Newegg have them from USD 79.99 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827136250)

If you're looking at backing up the discs without re-compression, then AnyDVD HD (right click on AnyDVD's tray icon, and click on 'Rip to Image...') and IMGBURN (http://www.imgburn.com/) is all you'll need. This is the case for 3D discs, as it's currently not possible to re-compress them.

For re-compression, check out BD Rebuilder (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=143716) - this is an open-source Windows application that makes use of x264 (a free H.264 encoder). I've been using this program for several years now - you'll need plenty of HDD space, a fast CPU and a lot of patience!

The copy protection mechanism you're referring to is Cinavia - I personally haven't encountered this where I live (Scotland), but I can imagine how annoying this is. The protection is embedded in the audio tracks of the affected discs, but the Blu-ray players have to be able to detect this. Slysoft are apparently working on an equivalent of BD Rebuilder, and hopefully will include an option to remove Cinavia - http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=53392

I hope this helps you.

[second childhood]

WARNING: DO NOT TRUST MY DISCUSSION. VERIFY THE FACTS FOR YOURSELF.MY MEMORY IS OFTEN WRONG.

Yes, there has been some announcement this week about DVDFab's new support of CINAVIA protection elimination[I think they have broken it for players-they had a workaround for PS3s before].
I've learned a lot about it in the past week but not everything about CINAVIA.

CINAVIA will be supported in ALL Blu Ray players made after Feb 2012. [I don't know about non-US]. It is a commercial standard. Because the vendors must comply with the rules of the Blu Ray Disc Association to even decode Blu Rays, they now must support the CINAVIA "standard".

The standard puts a special set of audio signals in the soundtrack of movies. Even movies at the Cinema [movie Theaters] will have this in their soundtracks. If a Blu Ray player sees a movie that was cam recorded in the theater or recorded from a Cinema distribution movie somehow- the player will mute the sound after about 20 minutes and display an error message.

For "backups [on Blu ray or on SDHC memory or on the network] when the Blu ray player sees that the CINAVIA audio code is not correct [ details missing in my head] it will mute the sound with a warning. You'll have to look to the net for the details of how that works. Not all movies are made with CINAVIA protection now but soon...?

So I'm looking for an older Blu Ray 3D player that doesn't have the CINAVIA code. It won't know how to look for the special audio signals in the soundtrack. Then I will never allow the firmware to be updated. I don't know when/how Blu Ray burners will be impacted. They license from the Blu Ray Disc Association also.

My Panasonic Blu Ray 3D player is CINAVIA compliant. It rejects movies that have CINAVIA audio code that don't match the code that is only in an original Blu Ray disc [I don't remember the matching that must happen to allow the movie the play correctly].

We used to say if a human can see and hear the movie it can be copied. With Cinavia you hear the audio with subtle hidden audio codes imbedded. Removing those is supposedly technical extremely difficult. Folks have tried all kinds of tricks without success [until now if DVDFab has really broken it].

[Adbear]

I don't see anything on their site about breaking Cinavia, only the shoddy hack for PS3's that doesn't work any more, and this comment for the MAC version

DVDFab added support to backup Cinavia's Blu-ray disc for home Blu-ray players which do not detect Cinavia

which is what everyone already does and have been doing since the first Cinavia discs came out, if the player doesn't detect Cinavia then you can just copy the disc and not worry about it. Why they put that in I don't know, other than to mislead people

[Frank]

Originally Posted by second childhood

[B] Removing those is supposedly technical extremely difficult. Folks have tried all kinds of tricks without success [until now if DVDFab has really broken it].

As of February 2012 from their own Forum

Please be aware that PS3 firmware >= v4.10 will no longer see DVDFab Cinavia solution (BDMV-REC) discs as a trusted source, which negates the Cinavia solution.

When it will be done we'll be the ones to do it, but it will not be any time very soon and not in AnyDVD either. If at all then in Slyce.

[second childhood]

Movie Fix 2.0 is a set of instructions offered on noerrors.info. It is not a computer program or application.

These are my opinions. The products mentioned are copyrighted. The use of their names here is to identify the subject of the critique. To learn about CINAVIA, search the net.

With the problem of CINAVIA anti-backup protection, I was looking all over the net for a solution. I came across the offering called Movie Fix 2.0. The product seems to use many other names to get search engine "hits".

I found and read several so called "reviews" of Movie Fix 2.0 but still could not understand what it was that was selling for $29. I noticed all the reviews had links to purchase the product. That makes these reviews self-serving, not independent. The reviews were carefully worded to disguise what the product is. They focused totally on what the product is supposed to do.

Later I found additional info on the net. As I read that info, I was disappointed to find that the product was only a set of instructions [and an offer of support], not an application. If you read the information on the noerrors.info site extremely carefully you may figure out that they are only offering instructions. They use terms such as: unique method, and guides to describe Movie Fix 2.0. From the noerror.info site, I could not determine that it was not an app.

More about the product as I understand it:
It is a set of detailed instructions describing how to use freeware applications from other sources which are supposed to solve the CINAVIA problem. I have not tried those instructions to find out if they work. In my view, they would require an great amount of work to apply them. For the product to be interesting to me, it should have included, at least, a proven computer script [a real program] that would automatically use the the third party applications. Whether you want to pay #29 for instructions is up to you. You might want to first see truly independent evaluation of whether the procedure does the job before purchasing.

Are instructions like these available elsewhere for free? I saw posts that told how other people say they solved the CINAVIA problem. I don't know if they worked either. Sorry I don't have a link to those. I also saw an application from a well-established software company to fix the CINAVIA problem for movies watched using a PS3. I am confident,based on knowing about the company, that their latest PS3 product works as they say. There is another solution discussed. It is using a Blu Ray/DVD player that does not have firmware that recognizes the CINAVIA anti-backup code. Using that kind of player you must never update the firmware. Updates are likely to include the CINAVIA code.