Bertie,
since BD burner is just a tool, your concern "...so the drive should be capable of producing copies that work with the PS3." have very little to do with a burner itself, but with format.

However, every one who deal with BDs have its own burner and opinion what "real burner" should be like, every one has its own preferences. For instance, I have LITE-ON and I'm happy with it. I've noticed however on this forum that most of the complaints related to Pioneer brand, and LITE-ON/LG are least.
I would suggest you to go to newegg.com and look at what they are offering there. They have "compare" option where you can choose 5 different drives to compare. Look at the media you have in mind if it supported. I personally strongly dislike external drives, but there are thousands of people who likes them and ready to fight.... It's really hard to give you an advise when it gets to hardware.

i had an LG and it died after 5 months. its just another mechanical piece can break or work forever. switching to pioneer for now.

[QUOTE=Bertie;40571]Hi,

I was thinking of buying a BD burner, Double layer, highest speed possible internal sata 5 1/4 inch drive to replace a standard DVD reader.

I already subscribe to DVD FAB (DVD to DVD & DVD to Mobile) but wanted to start backing up my large collection of Blu Ray disks.

I have a hi spec system, with plenty of memory, disk space and processor to crunch the numbers, are there any drives that I should avoid? I have not set a budget, so don't mind investing money, the disks now seem reasonable especially the 50gb DL BD's so I will buy soon, the last thing that I want is to buy a drive that is locked or inhibited, so I thought that you guys could recommend?

If the drive comes with software, or other essential stuff please let me know as I am pretty clueless when it comes to Blu Ray at the moment, but have read the forums looking for an ideal up-to-date setup, however everyone seems to prefer their own hardware.

I have a PS3 used solely as a media server plus Blu Ray player, so the drive should be capable of producing copies that work with the PS3.

Any assistance will be greatly appreciated,

Thanks guys.[/QUOTE]

Well myself I would go with the LG WH10LS30 that is selling on Newegg for about $140 then you get the $10 off promo code EMCYTYP55. And the software that normally comes with these types of burners is overrated. It most likely would come with some outdated version of PowerDVD etc. There is free alternatives for burning (Imgburn) and playback (MPC- Home Cinema, VLC Player) that in my opinion are better but you may like the stuff that comes with it. It all depends on user preference and what you want to accomplish. And I would go with quality media like verbatim or taiyo yuden. I've been having good success with the Optical Quantums also but some might disagree with my choice. Good luck.