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If you want to play Blu-ray movies on your PC but don't want to pony up $500 for a drive that can burn data to Blu-ray discs, Pioneer's $299 BDC-2202 Blu-ray combo drive may be just what you're looking for. That is, as long as you have Windows Vista (the bundled Ulead WinDVD 8 LE software player is Vista-only). And you'll need to be tolerant of this SATA-interface model's slow speeds compared with those of an average $50 DVD drive: The BDC-2202 burns single-layer DVDs at 8X, dual-layer DVDs at 4X, and CD-R/RWs at 24X. That said, the BDC-2202 is easily the least expensive Blu-ray player available for your PC.

The cost of Blu-ray doesn't stop with the drive, though: In addition to Windows Vista, you need at least 1GB of system memory, a dual-core CPU, and 256MB of video memory. Plus, your PC must be HDCP-compliant--equipped with an HDCP-ready graphics card, graphics driver, and display--for full-resolution playback over a DVI connection.

When I tried to install the drive, none of the software in the Pioneer-specific Corel bundle (WinDVD 8 LE, Burn.Now 4.5 SE, and Video Studio 11 SE) recognized the BDC-2202, and as a result wouldn't install. I ended up using a vendor-agnostic version of WinDVD 8, as well as of CyberLink's Power DVD 7.3 and Nero Ultra Edition, for playback and burning. According to Pioneer, this bug doesn't hit every system, but a fix for affected PCs should be posted online by the time you read this.

The BDC-2202 burned both DVD and CD media without incident, backed up DVDs quickly, and easily played Blu-ray movies. My 2GB, Intel Core 2 Duo test bed played Casino Royale, a high-bit-rate Blu-ray title, easily--but so did my 1GB, AMD Athlon FX-53 single-core system. My secret? I used a powerful GeForce 8600GTS graphics card, which shouldered the decoding duties. (Such support, however, is Vista-only for the nonce; nVidia drivers that will offload Blu-ray decoding in XP are due later this year.)

Blu-ray playback imposes stiff system requirements, and the BDC-2202 is of no use to people whose chosen format is HD DVD. But the BDC-2202 is a flawless performer, software issues aside, and for Blu-ray playback it's the best deal in town.

Jon L. Jacobi