I should be pointing you to these items, not the other way round.
(I'm over my ears in work right now).
The Samsung BluRay drive seems to be much more mature!
Seek times, error correction for the NEC are poor. It's louder and slower than the Samsung.
According to Heise, the drive reflects the development status from last summer, so NEC is probably quite a bit further than this drive suggests. They're planning a burner this summer for the same price that this ROM will be going for!
[edit]I really should have read the news item before jumping in on this.
[/edit]
G