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Blu-Ray PC Drives: Here they come!

Blu-Ray PC Drives: Here they come!

The time is just about upon us. Soon consumers will finally be able to purchase PC compatible Blu-Ray Drives. Some online stores are already offering several models for pre-sell with an expected release date of mid to late June 2006.

Pioneer is releasing its BDR-101 drive which has the capability and backward compatibility of: BD-R, BD-RE, DVD+R, DVD+R DL, DVD+RW, DVD-R DVD-R DL and DVD-RW.

One caveat though, this first drive can only write to 25GB single layer Blu-Ray media discs. Rumor also has it this first drive will not support CD-R / CD-RW media, although it is one of the only computer based drives advertised as supporting AACS copy protection which allows it the ability to playback
Blu-Ray based movie discs.

The Pioneer BDR-101 will retail for $ 900 USD.

Meanwhile Panasonic with their model LF-MB121JD Blu-Ray Burner is first to the finish line with a writer that will support the highly anticipated 50GB dual-layer capability. This drive is backwards compatible with and supports the same disc formats as listed
on the pioneer, however this drive will support DVD-RAM and will also support CD-R and CD-RW.

The Panasonic LF-MB121JD will retail for $ 850 USD.

In a turn of surprise, Samsung has announced its model SH-B022 Blu-Ray Writer drive which also supports 50GB media. The real surprise here is that this drive will retail for $ 499 USD. I recall paying
$ 600 USD for a Pioneer A03 2x DVD-R writer
when it was new around late 2001. 900 seems reasonable given the leap in storage capacity for this new technology, but Samsung releasing their drive for $ 499 is quite a shocker.

It will be interesting to see how long the other manufacturers are able to sell their drives with the same capability but at nearly twice the cost.

Mark Silva is the webmaster of www.hdmediainfo.com a web portal dedicated
to HD Television, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray information.

Article Source: Article Hub