Pioneer Rolls Out Portable Blu-ray Drive

By Niels Broekhuijsen
published

Pioneer releases a sleek Blu-ray burner.

Pioneer has built a new Blu-ray drive called the BDR-XU02JM. The device is a sleek external and portable Blu-ray drive targeted at Ultrabook and MacBook owners. It is also a slot loading device.

The unit is a Blu-ray burner, which can burn both single and dual layer Blu-ray discs at 6x speed, and triple and quadruple layer discs at 4x speed.  Double and triple layer BD-RE discs can be burned at 2x speeds. The unit can obviously also burn CDs and DVDs at speeds of 24x and 8x, respectively.

The unit is powered and run by USB 2.0.

There is no word on pricing yet, but the BDR-XU02JM will be released into the Japanese market this month, with worldwide availability shortly thereafter.

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Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

10 Comments Comment from the forums
  • dyno_05
    I herd really bad things about bluray on PC. People say your better off just buying a stand alone player because most bluray software isn't good. I bought a samsung external bluraydrive awile ago open boxed havn't used it yet to tell how the software is thou.
    Reply
  • guvnaguy
    Blu-ray worked great on my HP. Incredible sound and quality.
    That was until I upgraded to Windows 8 without realizing I would have to purchase a Windows-8 compatible version of the Blu-ray player software that originally came free with the computer. I guess when the upgrade price is only $40 you get what you pay for...

    I'm curious to know how noisy this thing is, being external. My external HDD make a lot of noise when it spins. Definitely interferes with the puny sound systems of a laptop.
    Reply
  • Soda-88
    guvnaguyBlu-ray worked great on my HP. Incredible sound and quality. That was until I upgraded to Windows 8 without realizing I would have to purchase a Windows-8 compatible version of the Blu-ray player software that originally came free with the computer. I guess when the upgrade price is only $40 you get what you pay for...I'm curious to know how noisy this thing is, being external. My external HDD make a lot of noise when it spins. Definitely interferes with the puny sound systems of a laptop.http://www.videolan.org/
    There you go. You're welcome.
    Reply
  • abbadon_34
    Should have been USB 3.0, at 6x blu-ray its already maxing out the 2.0 in most real world situations.
    Reply
  • JonnyDough
    I bought something similar from the same company four years ago. How is this news?
    Reply
  • JonnyDough
    dyno_05I herd really bad things about bluray on PC. People say your better off just buying a stand alone player because most bluray software isn't good. I bought a samsung external bluraydrive awile ago open boxed havn't used it yet to tell how the software is thou.
    Oh, they must have used Cyberlink crap.
    Reply
  • Vladislaus
    Soda-88http://www.videolan.org/There you go. You're welcome.Bluray on VLC is still in its experimental stage, and out of the box does´t work with encrypted burays.
    Reply
  • g-unit1111
    10513930 said:
    dyno_05I herd really bad things about bluray on PC. People say your better off just buying a stand alone player because most bluray software isn't good. I bought a samsung external bluraydrive awile ago open boxed havn't used it yet to tell how the software is thou.
    Oh, they must have used Cyberlink crap.

    I use Total Media Theater and it sucks just as bad as Cyberlink. I tried playing a blu ray movie on my HTPC and the thing froze after the first frame. Add that to the $100 cost per license for playback software and you don't have a real cost effective solution for HD movie playback. I usually wind up watching the iTunes files.
    Reply
  • 10tacle
    abbadon_34Should have been USB 3.0, at 6x blu-ray its already maxing out the 2.0 in most real world situations.
    Exactly. That was my first thought as well. This makes absolutely zero sense. Very disappointing, and for me with a 3.0 capable 1080p laptop, a definite deal breaker. I have two Pioneer BD-RWs and they work phenomenal in a primary and backup gaming rig.
    Reply
  • danwat1234
    Yeah if it can read Blurays at faster than 6x then USB2 is for sure a bottleneck. What is the max bluray read speed?
    Reply