In what
would appear to be a global release, though it's unclear from the machine translation, Panasonic just announced that
they will be shipping their LF-MB121JD Blu-ray Disc drive for PCs (not to be confused with their
DMP-BD10 player
expected in September) in OEM, regular, and
slimline slot-loading form factors, starting
10 June with support for 13 BD / DVD / CD formats. The drive delivers on both 25GB and dual-layer 50GB Blu-ray discs
allowing you to write at 2x (72Mbps) speeds to both BD-R / RE formats via a suite of bundled software. It also features
8x write speeds to both DVD±R and DVD RW, 4x to DVD±R DL, 6x to DVD-RW, 5x to DVD-RAM, 24x to CD-R and 16x
to CD-RW. Pretty much the same unit (and may well be) as the
BenQ BW1000, but superior to
both the
Samsung SH-B022
(which can read but not write to DVD and CD formats) and the
Pioneer BDR-101A which,
oddly, the last time we looked, didn't support CDs at all. Panasonic also announced their 25GB and 50GB 2x discs which
will hit the shelves starting April 28 just in time to prime the pump a bit.
[Via
Newlaunches]
posted April 21st 2006 5:20AM
The blue-ray logo and model # looks photoshopped... I hope the actual drive looks like its worth $850.
Interesting what will be the price of Panasonic Blu-ray disks.
I'm waiting till someone will release an All-format Drive. Now that would be cool wouldn't it!?
HD-DVD, HD-DVD-R/RE or whatever its going to be plus BD-R/RE formats 8x both DVDR & DVD RW, 4x to DVDR DL, 6x to DVD-RW, 5x to DVD-RAM, 24x to CD-R & 16x to CD-RW.
A Panny drive like this would be ready for almost anything!
NO WAR. RELEASE ALL FORMAT DRIVE PANNY!
I'll wait till the external blu-ray drives become $600 w/ Lightscribe :)
what do u expect a pc optical disc drive/burner to look like?
Actual Photo here
http://www.akihabaranews.com/news-11624-X.html
and video here
http://www.akihabaranews.com/news-11625-X.html
no support for mac and/or linux yet?
At $850 it better come with a solid gold bezel.
50gb @ x2... lol
it would be quicker to just walk to a shop and buy a harddrive, and cheaper.
@#5 - Linux? You are kidding! This thing is supposed to be the epitome of the comercial anti-linux sentiment.
With the user base growing for linux, I think that gadget makers should pay more attention to support open source technology. writing at 2x (72Mbps) speeds is great and many users will love it.
@#8
2x on Blu-Ray is different to 2x on DVD.
2x is 72Mbps - by my calculations a 25gb BD-R (25600Mb - correct me if I'm wrong) would take about 6minutes to write. Therefore making a 50gb disc about 12 minutes to write.
If i've omitted something in my math, please correct me.
Naturally once these write speeds will probably get a bit faster with time.
"writing at 2x (72Mbps) speeds is great and many users will love it."
400k anyone?
The drive is too expensive. Maybe it will come down later and will be practical for backup purposes, it's easier to split 100 gigabite chucks into a quarter and halfquarter with Blu-ray than HD-DVD's 30 Gig disks. That being said, I support HD-DVD. I could be that HD-DVD dominates the movie market and Blu Ray dominates the computer market. But then... Got Root?
Now, there have been a lot of complaints about how expensive this drive is. But the thing is, it's a lot cheaper than DVD drives when they first came out. This is new technology, and we must accept the prices for it to go forward, then the prices will go down rapidly.
#11, I think your math is a little off. 72Mbps is Mega-bits per second, not megabytes (MBps). So, at 2x, it would take ~47 mins to burn a 25GB blu-ray disc, and 104 mins to do a 50GB disc.
oops, I fat fingered the 50GB disc - should be 94 mins, not 104 mins.
REALITY IS A COLD BITCH SLAP TO THE FACE! Next generation technology (at least early on) wont be cheap! And now you know why the rumored $499 for the PS3 at launch is such a BARGAIN!
All of us tech savvy types know that the PS3 is basically a supercomputer disguised as a console and it will have a Linux Distro. I could almost get 2 for the price of this thing. You know I think I will. Black for the entertainment center, Silver for the office. SWEEEET!
For those complaining about the Blu-ray burn speed, give you a little reminder - first DVD burners (especially 1x DVD's) used to take about 40mins to burn a single DVD.
Also I can still CLEARLY remember CD burners priced at $600.
It's new technology, so give it time. The prices will come down faster then you can blink. (Slight exaggeration here.)
$850! How many 750GB Hard drives is that?
The $850 won't be worth it until we can make backups of Blu-ray movies.
#10... thats crazy... Linux's biggest appeal to the "techies" that use it is the fact that it is free... try to convince all those people to go pay $850 for a drive and $30-50 bucks for each disc...
11, you're wrong. 50 GB is actually 409,600 Mb, meaning it would take 95 minutes IF the drive runs at maximum speed (which is not very likely), therefore a walk to my local computer store to buy a hard drive really WOULD be faster. 25 GB is actually 204,800 Mb, meaning it would take 47 minutes IF the drive runs at maximum speed (which is not very likely), therefore a walk to my local computer store to buy a hard drive really WOULD be faster. Keep in mind, though, that that's just the burn time. If you burn 50 GB of data, it would also have to store a temporary image on the hard drive of the computer, and that takes a long time too. If you were burning a video onto the disc, it would also need to convert to h.264 to be able to play in any Blu-ray player. And you know how long THAT would take. All in all, if the video disc making process remains the same as today, the steps could be summarized as follows:
1. Transfer of HD content from camcorder to PC using firewire: 1:00 hrs for the whole tape, longer if you have more than one tape, or select bits and pieces from your tapes.
2. Editing (optional) (another 1:00 hrs)
3. Converting to h.264 (incredibly long)
4. Storing a temporary image of the content on the hard drive (also incredibly long)
5. Burning (95 minutes for 50 GB, 47 minutes for 35 GB)
All in all, making a Blu-ray video disc would take just about a whole day, meaning it would be hell:) DVideoD making today is actually already hell.
I remember the first DVD burners out on the market like the Pioneer DVR-S201 were around $5,000. So this Panasonic Blu-ray burner for a debut seems suprisingly resonable for a first of its kind.
However, Blu-ray players won't be popular until economies of scale are reaches and are cheaper per GB than DVDs, it s only recently that DVDs surpassed CDs in recordable media; the Panasonic looks to be a good start.
$850 they are out of their mind.
@#17
The PS3 a supercomputer? Whatever you are smoking, you need some better stuff. The way they are going, the PS3 will be lucky to play games after they take all the features away so they can get it out the door.
If the Betamax, oops, Blue-Ray group wanted to actually compete, they would be cheaper. They are hoping that people see it costs more, like every sony product and think it's better.
The funny thing about HD content is that not all movies or videos deserve to be HD worthy.
One of the first movies Sony is releasing on Bluray is Charlies Angels, and XXX:State of the Union. Do these movies really deserve to be seen in HD.
I myself have a hard time deciding if I want to EVEN download them via BT, and then another debate arises when I have to decide if they are burn worthy on a CDR.
With the advent of the HD DVD and BR burners, there is going to be another scramble from all the movie junkies to begin backing up every single HD movie that is going to be released, just like when those same junkies started backing up DVD's. It's not a question of if but when, because you know all that copyright protection is going to be cracked within a few weeks.
@#25,
I certainly agree with you. The reason why Sony just started releasing some 1080P projections is because it would be a huge contradiction if they release a Sony Bluray player with no accompanying Sony display capable of handling it's full resolution.
Even now though, the new SXRD's don't fully support 1080p display, not at full 60hz, only at 30hz, which is not full 1080p.
"But the thing is, it's a lot cheaper than DVD drives when they first came out."
What?! What DVD drives are you thinking of?
The original Creative Labs Encore bundle, which also came with a hardware decoder card (about half the cost right there), was $399 when it first hit the market. That was among the first, if not the first, PC DVD drives available.
If you mean DVD *recorder* drives, they were also not more than $300 initially. I bought mine only a year after they first hit the market and I paid $100.
$850 for a bare drive of any kind is *completely* ridiculous. Maybe that's just MSRP for the retail package, and the price for the OEM version will actually be much lower when it hits stores. It had better be, or they're not gonna sell a single unit. There will be competition, though, so the prices will come down pretty soon regardless.
Jeff, google is your friend, and you memory isnt apparently-
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-271831.html
$599 for a DVD-RW...thats DVD-RW at 2.4x...so quite a few months after dvd-r drives, and still $599US
according to www.heise.de this is the japanese release date. cant wait to see those showing up in the us or europe.
how about blu-ray software for playing movies on a pc, which...
(James #26) Come on face it; The sum of its parts equals what?
Say it with me now, SUPERCOMPUTER!
CPU:
Cell Processor
PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz
1 VMX vector unit per core
512KB L2 cache
7 x SPE @3.2GHz
7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE
* 1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy
Total floating point performance: 218 GFLOPS
GPU:
RSX @550MHz
1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance
Full HD (up to 1080p) x 2 channels
Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines
Sound:
Dolby 5.1ch, DTS, LPCM, etc. (Cell-based processing)
Memory:
256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz
256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz
System Bandwidth:
Main RAM -- 25.6GB/s
VRAM -- 22.4GB/s
RSX -- 20GB/s (write) + 15GB/s (read)
SB -- 2.5GB/s (write) + 2.5GB/s (read)
System Floating Point Performance:
2 TFLOPS
Storage:
Detachable 2.5" HDD slot x 1
I/O:
USB Front x 4, Rear x 2 (USB2.0)
Memory Stick standard/Duo, PRO x 1
SD standard/mini x 1
CompactFlash (Type I, II) x 1
Communication:
Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T) x 3 (input x 1 + output x 2)
Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR)
Controller:
Bluetooth (up to 7)
USB 2.0 (wired)
Wi-Fi (PSP)
Network (over IP)
AV Output:
Screen size: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
HDMI: HDMI out x 2
Analog: AV MULTI OUT x 1
Digital audio: DIGITAL OUT (OPTICAL) x 1
Disc Media:
CD PlayStation CD-ROM, PlayStation 2 CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW, SACD, SACD Hybrid (CD layer), SACD HD, DualDisc, DualDisc (audio side), DualDisc (DVD side)
DVD:
PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM, PlayStation 3 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW
Blu-ray Disc: PlayStation 3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE
All that is needed is a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse comb! Imagine trying to build a PC with these part/specs? PLEASE, Out of the door I would already be at $850 with my shiny new Panny BlueRay drive. Sonys loss (having to price the PS3 at a loss) is our gain...
ps3 will have linux pre-installed, so the kernel must (or at least should) support the blu-ray disc.
does that means blu-ray will have linux support eventually?
one more thing, assuming the price of bd-rom drive is (roughly) half of this burner, ps3 will cost more than $500, maybe more than $600.
dang..
Frakie (#33)
>> 256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz
not familiar with typical applications on supercomputers are ya? what you see as an supercomputer, I see as wasted bandwidth for any serious applications. ps3 as a combination of parts is only as impressive as its price. it is little more than a game console/HTPC. where does it store a large application, and what is the bandwidth of that device? today's supercomputers have thousands of processors in various memory configurations, often with gigabytes of memory per core... peak performance is in hundreds of teraflops for the fastest machines. a very capable gaming console, but by your definition of a supercomputer, you just have to wind the clok back a little further for me to claim my dell is a supercomputer.
#14
There is much debate over the dominance of HD-DVD vs. Blu ray in the HD movie market. Although the HD-DVD camp will be the first to market with their product, I truly believe content will eventually rule who will win this battle.
And it appears that Sony has lined up 7 of the 8 major US-based studios with the Blu-Ray camp. That alone should give pause to anyone thinking of investing in HD-DVD when it comes out, late again albeit, in June.
It'll be great for backing up video editing projects. Do they have it in black?