Pioneer's BRD-101A white-label Blu-ray burner

Not that we'd judge who ultimately wins the HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray battle by which of the two competitors get their beige-box OEM drives to market first, but you've got to appreciate Pioneer's BRD-101A. The drive hits up dual-layer DVD±R/RWs, and, of course, the next gen optical format—but not CDs, oddly. Guess that third laser was just too much. Still, something tells us this thing's going to cost slightly more than most white-label devices.

[Via Akihabara News]

[sephirothsin @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

yeesh, already a blu-ray burner out?

[boneyard @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

so it neither reads nor burns cds?

[Giuliano Riosa @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I guess this doesn't work with floppies then...

So CDs are on the way out, wow.

[nemi @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I am supprised that it even supports writting DVD-/+R.

The kicker is that it writes BR-R at ~2,700Kb/s , the same speed as 2x recording on a DVD-R.

A DVD-R (single Layer) is 4.5 Gb, a BR-R single layer is 30Gb ? So a 2 hour burn time per disc ?!?!?

[Andy @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

That's so cool that there are already burners for the new formats. I never liked having to wait until CDs and then DVDs were mainstream for a while before the burners really became prevalent. Cool stuff.

[The1 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Price price prie...seems to be lacking.

[The1 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Price price prie...seems to be lacking.

[macsucks @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Pioneer is a pioneer in supporting the wrong formats... in the DVD+R vs DVD-R war, they supported DVD-R and they dumped millions in marketing for the -R standard but ended up adapting to +R in the end...

[Jeff @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

nemi - it used to take half an hour to burn a 650 meg CD-R on first gen equipment. Expect subsequent models to be much faster.

I remember agonizing over my 2x CD-R and now 8X DVD-R is starting to take longer than I like.

[OddManOut @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Well, well, well...



And so many people said/told me a multi laser drive would NEVER happen.

And it's the FIRST FRICK'N ONE to come to market...

(well it ain't at market really 'till some geek has bought it, but it -probably- will be the first out of the gate...)

I know I'll get no apologies, but it is nice to be vindicated all the same.

(Particularly since such drives DO exist, which means I *might* have the chance of owning one some day!)

[Bryan @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

So you have to wait another 6 months to a year, to insert your first BD disc. but hey its cool. Just as long as HD-DVD goes straight to the trash heap, I'll be happy.

what do I know. I love my minidisc player.

[John Laur @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I would imagine that this drive is not geared towards consumers. When their first DVD recording drives came out they were priced upwards of $5K, so I'd expect this drive to cost $1K at minimum. The bonus you get with blu-ray is that it was engineered from the beginning to be a recordable format, so there was not a big delay before recorders hit the market as there was with CD's and DVD's.

Also of note, DVD-R drives that can handle writing discs with CSS and are suitable for testing and making DVD masters are still pretty pricey.

[ajservo @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

macsucks,

The -R format was adopted quite heavily in video production. The Pioneer brand of DVD burners sold like crazy. Just because you didn't have one, doesn't mean it didn't do well.

Yeah, HP and Dell put +R burners in their systems, but homebrewed systems got Pioneers and NEC burners around here. And nowdays, the systems that HP and Dell put out adopted -R burning just like Pioneer and NEC adopted the +R format. This was one of those rare wacky situations where both managed to keep a foothold in the market.

[James @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

Looks fake. Notice where the MFD and the Serial Number is covered up with a sticker? And the "CODE BDR-101A" looks like faked too. The "R" is a different font than the one on my Pioneer DVD burner. The mottled fill of the font look makes it look fake. "The BDR-101A" on the lower right corner of the label looks fake too. The color doesn't match the rest of that block. The block on the lower right corner of the label looks pasted in. The edge colors are offwhite than the rest of the label.

FAKE.

[Mangykid @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

The only thing stupider than calling this fake would be to actually MAKE a fake image of a blu-ray burner.

[Pal @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

I should make a fake HD-DVD drive just to spice up Engadget.

#14: I agree, I thought the same when I saw it.

[l @ Dec 19th 2005 1:05AM]

first of all it is not "out". secondly not only does it reportedly not support cd format, it also does not support DVD-RAM. if you bothered to read you would find that out. thirdly it was my first thought that this was a fraud image, but i still hope it is real. fourth if all you who wish to diss the -r format please notice that the price for -r is reasonably lower than +r. for myself, if i am simply backing up data then the -r is cheaper. anything else is simply getting ripped off. finally when you come down to it, i don't think that the size difference will make up for the overall cost of bluray vs hd-dvd. blu-ray will be about 27gb on a single disc (who can afford a double layer at 54gb more than twice the cost) vs the 20gb of hd-dvd. in the end what works today is the companies pushing it, how much room you really need, who is brought on board, and of course cost. seven extra gigs is cool, but for the cost it may not be worth it.

yours,
l

[Crampedson @ Dec 28th 2005 1:08AM]

to #10, all DVD/CD-RW burners use 2 red lasers anyway.