Pioneer Offers 8x Dual-Layer Blu-ray Writer
Earlier today, Pioneer introduced the BDR-2203, its internal 8x dual-layer Blu-ray writer, however general consumers may tremble at the knees by the sight of its monstrous pricetag.
Earlier today, Pioneer introduced the BDR-2203, its internal 8x dual-layer Blu-ray writer, however general consumers may tremble at the knees by the sight of its monstrous price tag.
Looking for a way to archive a crazy amount of data? Then Pioneer's BDR-2203 may be the ticket, its latest internal Blu-ray disk drive that features 8x dual-layer write support. What that means to consumers is that they can store up to 50 GB of data on one Blu-ray disk. According to the company, it will take users 15 minutes to write 25 GB of information to a single-layer BD disk; 30 minutes to write 50 GB of data using the new writer. However, the drive doesn't come cheap, requiring consumers to fork over a whopping $249.99. Is it worth it? Perhaps so, but general consumers may want to wait a while.
“As one of the earliest advocates of Blu-ray Disc technology, Pioneer recognized the many advantages the format could have for consumer and professional users, which has culminated in our development of one of the industry’s most robust BD writers to date,” said Steve Cohn, director of optical disc sales for Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. “When considering that a dual-layer Blu-ray Disc is equivalent to ten single-layer DVDs, our BDR-2203 is a viable PC upgrade for those who are looking to enter this new era of HD playback, storage and picture performance in every facet of their life.”
In addition to the hardware, the BDR-2203 comes packed with CyberLink software: PowerDirector, PowerDVD, and Power2Go. CyberLink's PowerDirector enables end-users to capture, edit, and burn high-definition and widescreen formatted video. PowerDVD, on the other hand, is nothing more than a commercial media playback tool which usually comes bundled with PC systems and internal DVD/Blu-ray drives. Power2Go is CyberLink's all-media disc burning software, allowing users to perform drag-and-drop burning, audio file conversion, video disc authoring. And more.
As for the specifics of the drive, the BDR-2203 indicates that the drive is capable of burning up to 8x using BD-R and BD-R DL discs, and up to 2x using BD-RE and BD-RE DL discs. Additionally, the drive reads up to 8x speed on BD-ROM/BD-ROM DL, BD-R, and BD-RE discs, and up to 6x on BD-R DL and BD-RE DL media. As for serving the DVD consumers, the drive writes up to 16x speed on DVD-R/+R, up to 8x on DVD-R/+R (DL), up to 8x on DVD+RW, up to 6x on DVD-RW, and up to 5x on DVD-RAM. Working as a CD drive, the BDR-2203 writes up to 32x on CD-R, and up to 24x on CD-RW.
Pioneer said that the Blu-ray drive is shipping this month, so expect the BDR-2203 to hit your local electronics store soon.
just my 2 cents
Having said that, I'd probably wait until a price drop or two until I'd get one for myself. Since there isn't an OS that natively supports Blu-ray playback, I don't mind waiting anyway.
For the storage space it IS cheap. But a company won't use it for a backup solution until there is data showing how long the DLBR disc will reliably read, and a consumer won't likely go for it when they can just get a second and third hard drive that is likely far larger than the one they currently use for less than the cost of this drive (ignoring media price) and just backup data to the alternate hard drive/s, easier, cheaper, and quicker.
That leaves people who want to burn HD movies. I have no clue how large that market is but I doubt its terribly large.
just have games released on thumbdrives, and all shall be swell
External HDDs, HTPCs, thumbdrives, and the much lower cost of DVDs are the reasons I'll continue to live without until the above factors change.
For me, the 250$ price tag is not a determining factor.
For business this is a great back-up option. A tape drive with a GB capacity would be more expensive and take much longer to archive & restore.
For home users, bulk dual layer BDRom disks run $25-30 each, so if you can afford to pick up a 10 pack, the burner's price is nothing.
Until then, I'm happy to see the progress in burners.
Blu-Rays are promosed to be more durable than DVDs with a shelf life of 50+ years.
I'm waiting for the dual layer and 16 layer disks to be affordable so I can start backing-up to disks.
Never had that happen to me (knock on wood). Were they all a particular brand of disc? I've never had a problem with MAM-A silver discs. For really important stuff, I use their gold discs.
Why do you believe DVDs are more reliable? It is my understanding that they use the same substrate technologies. CD's definitely have a lot more redundancy built in to them than DVD. You really have to put a lot of scratches on a CD to get it to fail whereas even small smudges can cause DVDs to have bit errors.
Yes, the gold disks should last for 100+ years(at least the life of the disk)
Even if the burner was for free, $5 is the price of a SINGLE layer BD-R. This means 1 TB costs $100 in HDD, but $200 in BD-R. If the data is important, you can RAID 1 HDDs and still have the same cost.
Besides, handling and retrieving data from one or two HDDs is much more practical than from 40 discs.
DVD-Rs are still the cheapest way for consumers to backup their data (in GBs/$), though you can quickly get lost in the piles of discs if you want to handle large quantities of data, so I still prefer HDDs. Just make sure the important stuff is in more than one.
Backing up data in BD is only going to become interesting when media becomes dirty cheap, as has happened to DVDs.