Pioneer ships first Blu-ray computer drive

Darius Chang | May 18, 2006

Pioneer Electronics announced today that it is shipping a Blu-ray computer drive, the industry's first. The BDR-101A uses blue laser technology to burn up to 25GB of data onto a single-layer Blu-ray disc. It ships with Roxio Blu-ray Disc software and blank TDK Blu-ray discs.

As expected, the BDR-101A write speeds are slow when writing to BD-R and BD-RE (rewritable): 2x. What's surprising is its slow DVD write speeds: 8x to single-layer -R and +R; 4x to -RW and +RW; 2.4x to double-layer +R; and 2x to double-layer -R. As soon as we can get our hands on a unit, we will test it and let you know how it performs.

Thinking about getting one? Hope you have US$1,000 (S$1579.95) to spare, because this drive ain't cheap. Also expensive are the Blu-ray discs. A quick search on the Internet showed TDK BD-R discs for about US$18 (S$28.44) apiece and BD-RE discs for about US$20 (S$31.60) apiece. Yikes!

Filed under: PC & Peripherals
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