You can check on ebay for the BH16NS55 and some of the others, it is no worse than some of the 3rd party sellers on amazon. There are two of the BE16NU50 available as Amazon Warehouse deals ("Fulfilled by Amazon") for US$135. They are at least returnable an amz,
signals
Thanks for your suggestions and confirmation, Signals. I ended up purchasing a "like new" BE16NU50 off of Amazon Warehouse for $150 and am happy to say it works well. I hadn't realized that, while external, it required external power. All my other BD-RE drives are USB-powered. That makes using it from a laptop a bit less convenient, but not a deal-breaker. I'm not sure how to tell the firmware version.
So far, "COCO" ripped perfectly (7.43GB), but "Blade Runner 2049" stopped at 35% (3.77GB or 4,057,866,564 bytes) ... twice. I can't tell if I should blame the M-DISC drive or DVDFab UHD Ripper. I'm about to try my third trial UHD rip to see if I can split the difference: most work, or most don't work.
- Dave