Question 1

will this work with a AMD 8core ?

Accepted Answer

I cannot say for sure. I am a dye hard Intel fan but AMD must rock. Too many people are just as convinced as I am in Intel. It has been stated that it won’t but I can’t see any reason why it shouldn’t. Here is what I suggest. check out the return policy and see if they will take it back of it won’t work for you. One of the things that they don’t mention in the prospectus is that to play 4 K material you will need to buy a different version of the software as what is included won’t do the job. Now on to the good news. This device is dynamite! It is fast and accurate! It will be worth the trouble to try it out. Believe it or not I am using this on my laptop. I am using a powered STATA to USB 3 dongle and it works like lighting in a bottle! I am using a Lenovo Y700 4k Touch. F A S T! This device in that configuration is well up to the task.
Now you do need horse power to do the job. I have an i7 with 16 gigs of memory and using a PCI M drive.
I am totally unfamiliar with AMD equipment. It has been stated that you need an i5 or i7 and I can tell you sometimes it struggles just a little when jostled by too many commands at once with my set up. Do your homework and failing that order it and try it out and if it does not work return it the return policy allows. Again it worth the effort! I find it a great unit but the software that comes with it is a little lacking but totally functional! I will wair for NERO to catch up. Pioneer is way ahead of the curve on this one!
TjW

Question 2

Does anyone use this to rip 4k blu-rays?  Even if you don't have all the prerequisites to play the disk on your computer, can you still rip it using makemkv? Of course I'd only use this for backing up my 4k blu-ray collection.

Accepted Answer

It can read 4k blu-rays but I cannot play. Finding a 4k monitor that will accept 4k video is really tricky. At least it was 3 months ago. I don't know if anyone is ripping 4k blu-rays.  So in all honesty I probably should have saved and got a less expensive reagular blu-ray burner reader because I am not able to take advantage of this yet. Until someone comes up with a program to crack 4k blu-rays to play on all 4k monitors.

Question 3

Anyone know if this would work with a 1440p monitor (in my case Acer Predator XB271HU)? I read there are hardware requirements for this to work and netflix 4k (also having hardware reqs) does not work with my monitor.

Accepted Answer

So heres the thing, for the 4k uhd bluray playback you at minimum need a monitor that supports HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2 (the new encryption standard for 4K UHD). A cursory search of the acer monitor reveals it only supports HDMI 1.4, which will not be compatible for 4K UHD playback. I have tested this drive and the included powerdvd software with a Dell UltraSharp 27 4K HDR Monitor: UP2718Q and can confirm that it works. You also need a motherboard with HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2 and a compatible Kaby Lake CPU which supports Intel Software Gaurd Extensions. The motherboard also needs to support Intel Software Gaurd Extensions. Hope this helps!

Question 4

Can this product play 4K Blue-Ray movie?

Accepted Answer

Yes however, the hardware requirements are pretty steep!

From the Pioneer Website: "
Support Ultra HD Blu-ray playback
211UBK supports Ultra HD Blu-ray playback using bundled CyberLink software."

You can search on the web for Pioneer Electronics Optical Drives which will link you to the Pioneer website. Then click on optical drives, then click on the BDR-211UBK. I highly suggest you read the entire requirements list.

Pioneer also offers their Automatic discrimination tool” to help ensure you experience is successful.

Question 5

would  this  work for  a  maximus  xi  extreme,   1151  socket  300 i9-9900k and  titan  xp  empire?

Accepted Answer

I don't know why not, I use them for  4k encoding

Question 6

Can I write files to blu-ray discs if all I want to do is catalog them and not burn them to watch on a DVD player? 
My PC is not even close to be able to play 4K and most things I have are not in 4K. Mostly 1080P but I do have a few 4K things I wanted to save. These are just backups I want to make. I just wanted the ability to write to bigger discs so minimize the room I will need and discs needed. However I do have some files which are approaching eighty gigabytes so I NEED the option to burn to higher capacity discs. I have an intel core I5 6400 @2.7gh and a slightly older radeon video card.

Accepted Answer

I found that this drive didn't function very well and didn't have as many features for the price and returned it. This drive does not give you computer readable data access to the data on a UHD disk! They bundle it with a CL product that, with the latest processor/Graphics card technology can play it if you are connected to the internet. This program uses the latest anti-copy security technology that contacts thru the internet a key that allows you to play a UHD disk.  But no UHD data access from a PC. 
Instead I bought an LG Blu-ray/DVD Writer Optical Drive - WH16NS60 with more features.  It writes Three Layer BDXL-R/BDXL RE discs with 100GB capacity and quad layer BDXL-R discs with 128GB storage capacity on a single disc. 
It also writes M-Disks up to 100GB and have a 1000 year stability life of the stored data instead of the 10 yearish lifespan of standard organic writable disk technology.
But the big benefit is that it comes with an LG program that unlocks data on UHD disks.  Even if your computer can't play UHD disks, there are programs that can take this data and down convert it to an optimized HD image that is close to 4k on a bluray disk format.
I got the internal SATA drive and mounted it in an external drive chassis with both SATA and USB 3 connections.  This way I can use it on different computers or media streaming players.
The LG is a much better drive for your proposed use.

Question 7

Will this work with the 299X platform even though it is technically skylake X?

Accepted Answer

You won't be able to play commercial UHD Blu-ray.  X299 motherboards, Kaby Lake-X processors, and Skylake-X processors lack some of the required features for that, but this drive will work in your system for playing other kinds of commercially produced discs as well as reading from and writing to supported types of burnable media.

The hardware requirements for playing  UHD Blu-ray include, among other things,  a non-X Kaby Lake or non-X Coffee Lake processor with an iGPU and a compatible motherboard with a DP 1.2 port or an HDMI 2.0 port, plus the ability to directly enable SGX in the BIOS (the SGX setting "Software Controlled" is not sufficient).  At present, discrete graphics adapters won't work for UHD Blu-ray playback because SGX can only protect memory allocated to Intel integrated graphics adapters.

Question 8

Per the requirements, do you actually need a 7th gen Kaby Lake cpu to play 4k UHD Blu-rays?  Why won't 6th gen Skylake work, assuming you have a compatible motherboard, gpu, and monitor?

Accepted Answer

Getting the hardware together is very tricky. You will require at least a 7th gen CPU. The DRM requires hardware decryption to read UHD blu-rays which has to work across the CPU, chipset, video card, and display. The hardware decryption is only built into certain 7th gen+ intel CPUs, certain intel chipsets, and certain video cards. For example, I don't believe an 8th gen cpu on x299 chipset will work, but 8th gen on Z390 might. Essentially UHD is not supported on some of the X or extreme edition CPUs, even the newest ones. Also, an Nvidia GTX 980 "supports UHD" but not UHD blu-ray decryption, it's like streaming UHD or something. So I think you'd have to have a minimum 10 or 20 series Nvidia card. All this in addition to that expensive UHD display and HDMI cable. So I recommend that you do an extreme amount of research into building a PC before thinking it will be able to play UHD blu-rays. At last check, the latest NUC can't do it either. I blame it all on DRM...

Question 9

Can this play 3D Blu-Ray too?

Accepted Answer

It will play ripped files but will only play DVDs with the proper software player that is connected to the internet to verify the disks HDCP encription. Otherwise it can't decode the Disk Data.

Question 10

Is this drive region free?

Accepted Answer

No. Like most drives it sets itself to the region of the first disk you insert, and allows a limited number of changes (3-5).

Questions & Answers