I’ve got Panasonic’s latest Blu-ray recorder here, the DMR-BW880, and on opening it up was startled to find that there were no blank recordable Blu-ray discs contained in the box. Previous models have included them I think.
So I went to Panasonic’s website to see how much they’d cost to purchase a couple for testing purposes. Incredibly, I don’t think the prices have come down at all. Single layer (25GB) discs are $30 for write once, $40 for rewritable, and dual layer are $60 and $80 respectively.
Each!
Googling around, I found a place in Melbourne (BD-R Blu-Ray Discs Australia) that does mail order at far more reasonable prices. No brand names, though, as far as I could tell. One of the more attractive products is a pack of ten 50GB BD-Rs for $129 (ie. $12.90 each).
Update (1:19pm, 13 July): BD-R Blu-Ray Discs Australia tell me that they do BD-Rs, but not BD-REs (rewritables). I wondered what their customer makeup is like, and here’s what they say:
We do have a variety of customers that use our discs for archival/data storage as well as AV purposes. Some of customers include AV Central in SA, Michael’s Camera House and a large number of Wedding photographers and design agencies (e.g. Hard Hat Digital).
We also have a number of customers who use them for burning Blu Ray movies and other personal use. We have tested our discs on pretty much every burner on the market so you should not have any issues using our discs for any of the purposes you need.