IODATA launches BRD-UM2 & BRD-AM2B Blu-ray drives

Looks like Panny's not the only company showing off their Blu-ray offerings in Japan today. IODATA's got two of their own: the internal BRD-UM2, and external USB BRD-AM2B, which will go for ¥110,250 and ¥121,800, respectively (that's $942 US and $1,041 US, also respectively). Looks like these will also burn dual-layer BD-R and BD-RE media, as well as your usual DVD±RW and CD-RW, and will even beat Panasonic's offering to market by a solid 9 days with a June 1st release date. So keep an eye out with your favorite gadget importer and keep that credit card clean.

[Via Impress]

[minus_273 @ Apr 21st 2006 10:41AM]

good good. 1k for a DVD drive. One can only wonder how much the PS3 will cost with one of these babies built in.

[Allan Alfabet @ Apr 21st 2006 10:48AM]

Seriously, do they have to put every supported media logo on the front of the drawer? Ya, if it burns Blu-rays, I gonna assume it prolly does CD's okay too. It's got a sponsored NASCAR aesthetic. Which means ugly.

[RyanV @ Apr 21st 2006 11:01AM]

i put my money into a network attached storage. I think the new formats of optical media have missed the boat. I want to be able to have media on a drive that i can stream to any TV in my house. Drive space is cheap - even when its redundant.

optical discs are out. Give me a service that i can download high-def movies and other video. That will allow me to keep track of an account of what i "own" so that if there ever was a drive failure or something of that nature, i'd have access to the content i already purchased. I'll spend a lot more money if i dont have to go to best buy every tuesday for new content.

[ty @ Apr 21st 2006 11:03AM]

This is a BD/DVD/CD burner. The PS3 will only be readable BD/DVD/CD ... im guessing this makes quite a difference in cost. So, where the heck are the HD-DVD burners at and how much are they gonna cost?

[skype_fan @ Apr 21st 2006 11:23AM]

These prices are plain stupid, we had the same game with the DVD drives, so lets wait 6-12 months and then we can think of buying them. The industry has more pressure than consumers to hop on to HD-DVD or BlueRay

[Dhiram @ Apr 21st 2006 11:47AM]

It is just a rebranded Pioneer Blu-Ray drive.

[Nort @ Apr 21st 2006 12:50PM]

I'm becoming less impressed with the new HD discs

They cost too much. They're going to be slower than DVD drives. The media is expensive.

What a fiasco Sony has on it's hands.

I'm beginning to wonder how expensive the PS3 will be with these early figures finally coming to light.

[Jeff @ Apr 21st 2006 1:20PM]

"I'm beginning to wonder how expensive the PS3 will be with these early figures finally coming to light."

Did the PS3 pick up a BD *recorder* at some point when I wasn't looking?

[Lorin Thwaits @ Apr 22nd 2006 1:32PM]

A friend and I dismantled Toshiba's new HD-A1 player in order to find out what made it tick, and were intrigued to learn that under the hood the HD-DVD drive itself is a standard IDE unit designed for a desktop PC. Also inside is a USB flash drive on a daughter card:

http://geekswithblogs.net/lorint/archive/2006/04/21/75795.aspx

[chess set @ Apr 23rd 2006 2:04PM]

Single spin cd writers were the same price when they first came out, so just wait a few years and the price will drop drastically.