Quad-Interface Blu-Ray Burner at 12x Appears
This external Blu-ray burner offers four ways to connect to a PC or Mac.
Looking for an external (or internal) drive to store all those "special files" on disk? Look no further than OWC's Mercury Pro 12x Blu-ray burner, using a Pioneer BDR-205 and costing a whopping $349.99 USD. This Blu-ray drive supports burning up to 50 GB of data or high-definition video on BD-R dual-layer media at 12x speed; the drive burns at 2x when using BD-RE. Or, if you prefer sticking to the old-school DVDs, consumers can cram 8.5 GB on a dual-layer disk at 16x; CD-R media burns at 40x.
But what makes this device really cool is its quad interface, offering four ways for consumers to connect the burner to a Mac or PC. Offering pure Plug & Play support, the Mercury Pro provides FireWire 800 (two ports), FireWire 400 (one port), USB 2.0 (one port), and eSATA (one port). The drive also includes cables for each connection.
For $449.99 USB, OWC is also offering this bundle, throwing in Roxio's Toast 10 Titanium Pro but it's only compatible with Macintosh hardware, requiring Mac OS X v10.5.x. Of course, Windows users have a plethora of more advaned burning utilities.
- Storage,
- Microsoft Windows,
- Business Storage,
- Quad ,
- Interface ,
- Blu-ray ,
- Burner ,
- PC
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Neat product, but I don't think it justifies the 350$ price tag. I could build another computer for that much.
A step in the right direction, but the media def has not caught up in price to justify it now.
Even those professionals that could make use out of something like this probably have something equivalent or better at a commercial grade level.
I don't see this going far. I see sites like Hulu seeing double or even triple the users in the next year or so due to the increasing popularity of Netbooks - of which do not have a CD/DVD drive, With Windows 7's simplified and improved file-sharing system; it is now easy for anyone with a Netbook to watch a movie that is in the DVD/Blu-Ray drive of another computer.
Omg you spelled advanced wrong! Fix it before all the haters complain how Tom's is going downhill.
$449.99 USB?
isn't it USD??
12x Blu Ray speeds on 4x Blu Ray disc speeds = 4x speed... well worth the $450 price tag.
Honestly unless I'm buring 100 different blue rays a week this purchase makes absolutly no sense. dvd burners are so cheap now why would you spend like 10x the amount? 1 TB of storage also goes for like less $100. And actually if you have like $300 you probably get like what? 6-10 TB or 200 blue ray disks. And if you need the backup blue ray discs which are mainly movies won't you just go buy the lost copy again?
nice mac compatible... if only it was firewire
Wait it is firewire... 400 and 800.. nice!
$449.99 USB?isn't it USD??
hehe, classic Kevin
pretty sweet connectivity, pretty pricey too but probably worth it.
does it mean you can connect upto 4 PC's to this?
Love it when hardware comes with every possible cable configuration, OWC gets a thumbs up for that if nothing else.
Why on earth would you need Firewire 800 on a device that couldn't possibly utilize a full USB 2.0 connection at 480 Mbps?
The price is a huge OUCH....BD Drives and burners are still too expencive...
hehe, classic Kevin
I am frankly surprised he is still employed by THG. He has NO CONCEPT of proof reading.
But, then again, THG really took a dive after Dr. Tom Pabst sold it to "Bestofmedia Group" (which is a bit of a contradiction).
...sigh
It's great that they made it multi-platform compatible so Mac users have the Blu-ray option PC users have had for so long now, but why did they have to give it the Mac style price tag?
Of course, Windows users have a plethora of more advaned burning utilities.
That seems like an attack on Macintosh...
You and Tuan want to go into the boxing ring and duke it out over whose better?
I'd love to see that Mac vs. PC commercial. =D
By the way, spell check please.
$350 is a bit too rich for me, so I guess my $30 internal will have to do.
I actually purchased (a while back; don't know if still available) just the quad-connective enclosure, and then can put whatever drive I want in it. Right now it's just a BD-ROM, but down the road (when the discs are affordable), I can swap in a burner...or whatever other optical storage device comes around.
I believe it was ~$90.
Not cheap, but to be able to hook it up to my old PC (eSata card added) or my Macbook Pro (which of course doesn't have a blu ray drive, and is also running eSata via an expresscard, but which I hoookup via Firewire 800) makes it a very worthwhile solution.
I don't see this going far. I see sites like Hulu seeing double or even triple the users in the next year or so due to the increasing popularity of Netbooks - of which do not have a CD/DVD drive, With Windows 7's simplified and improved file-sharing system; it is now easy for anyone with a Netbook to watch a movie that is in the DVD/Blu-Ray drive of another computer.
The online file sharing is the precursor to cloud computing. But would you save your entire family photo albums on google? some things are worth burning. At 5 Mb a jpg you need blu-ray.
At last an eSata media burner! (or at least it's the first one I've encountered thus far)
Only problem though is that even a 50GB media (and a very expansive one I should add) isn't all that useful for backup when hard drive space is in TeraBytes.
I think I'm gonna skip Blu-Ray, and just wait for the next format. It has been too long and the prices still won't drop 200$ for a burner(just checked on newegg). I really can't justify paying that much for an optical drive. Not to mention the media isn't exactly cheap.
I really hate Sony for creating this whole mess.
Skipping till the next format. It shouldn't be long now.
Sry too much money still, I'd rather buy a Blu-ray reader/dvd burner and rip the blu-ray to something smaller file size like .mkv etc..
We have over 8,000 satisfied customers...
2 days ago his site said he had 5,000 satisfied customers, that's a lot of mouse pads (1d Free, not 2) to sell in 2 days.
the reliability of burned optical disks is not as good as manufactured optical disks -period- . even the costs do not justify themselves . for 90-110 dollars i can get 1 tb hdd = about 19/20 "dual layer" disks' capacity free of dust , scratches and capable of reading and writing itself . for a few more get eSata external .
whats ok is bluray readers , they are needed .
Still waiting for Blue-ray 2nd gen to come out so they will be more affordable and faster.
The online file sharing is the precursor to cloud computing. But would you save your entire family photo albums on google? some things are worth burning. At 5 Mb a jpg you need blu-ray.
LOL Why would you need blu-ray? You can get an external 1TB HD for ~$100, which is faster and easier to back-up your pictures and/or data with. Not to mention its also a lot more reliable than optical media.
So no, you don't need "blu-ray" for that. Just a USB port and an external hard drive.
I am of the same opinion, that this would have a fairly small market right now. I have no need for a bluray burner. I suppose I might in the future if I were making my own hidef home movies, but I would certainly wait until prices fell. Quite a lot acutally.
Ditto eccentric, an external HD makes a lot of sense as far as storage goes.
an external HDD (or internal, for that matter) is a mixed bag, unless it's RAIDed; I've had EVERY major brand of hard drive fail on me at one point or another. Other friends have lost critical data as well. Optical media, while it does "die" eventually, seems a much more 'stable' solution in many regards; I have CD-R's that work just fine dating from 1998. Then again, I have hard drives that have worked since then, too (though none have been actually USED in years...).
I would definitely back up to blu ray...if the cost of the media wasn't so absurd. It's not the price of the burners that's limiting its adoption rate...
If you want "safe" HDD backups, you either need to RAID 1 or RAID 5 -- both of which can be costly endeavors. Ironically, it's the path I've currently taken (Drobo).
People that really need it buy it it's that simple. People that want this cheap is mostly for ripping movies. If there wasn't any warez on the internet or illegal movies Bluray would sell like pieces of bread. Anyway the idea of buying more HD's terrabytes is cheap nowadays and faster.
The longer blue ray burners & media delay in cutting the price.. the shorter their lifespan & relevancy as a PC industry part remains intact. We start a new year in just under 2 months. Flash is slowly making inroads as a preferred media storage device. Along with large capacity hard drives, and online backup blue ray is looking mighty sad. I can imagine DVRs and other devices with card slots, hard drives and wireless technology to replace disc backups and even dvd's might see their relevancy decline the way VHS and analog media did a decade ago. Why not have ~$59 readers, ~$150 burners and $1-3 discs (based on volume) NOW instead of 5 years from now, when it will be too late?