Plextor's Blu-ray burner, the PX-B900A

Nothing we haven't seen before, but Plextor is getting into the Blu-ray burner game with their new PX-B900A. It's all like usual, with 2x speed, BD-R and BD-RE (rewritable) compatibility, and capacities of 25GB and 50GB. The drive also does the DVD-RAM and DVD±R/RW thing, including dual layer. You can even burn CDs, like the Philips version -- something Pioneer failed to included in their BRD-101A. The drive should be available around September or October of this year, but no word on pricing yet.

[Eli @ Jun 29th 2006 1:18PM]

I understand that people need lots of storage space, but come on! It's not even much more expensive to buy an external hard disk. Am I the only one who still burns way more CDs than DVDs? Why don't we focus on getting CDs to burn at 72x?

[Jboy001 @ Jun 29th 2006 1:30PM]

Plextor is a quality brand, but you usually pay a premium price

in response to Eli -
isn't 72x past the point where the disc flys apart because its spinning so fast?
i thought 48x/52x were the fastest possible before the discs broke.

[disguised @ Jun 29th 2006 1:39PM]

Finally some true use of Blu-ray and HDDVD disks.
To hell with those movies.

[Jeff @ Jun 29th 2006 1:55PM]

Never burn CDs anymore. I burn about 200 DVD-Rs a month though. So these will be huge for me. Or an HD-DVD one...

[DannyMac @ Jun 29th 2006 1:56PM]

disguised: Yeah, but this drive doesn't do HDDVD. It has something to do with the licensing, Sony does not allow a drive that does Blueray to do HDDVD. :

[TC @ Jun 29th 2006 2:00PM]

That's an impressive feature set if it does CD, BluRay, DVD-Ram AND DVD±RW!
Oh and Eli, If you fancy burning stuff for your mates onto ExternalHDD it starts to get pricey giving away all those hard drives. You get lots of friends though.

[Steve D @ Jun 29th 2006 2:12PM]

so these will be around $400 and the BR discs around 25 per disc?????.....

[jav0 @ Jun 29th 2006 2:22PM]

will the ps3 or blu-ray player accept blu-ray burn disc with movies or not?

[antaeus @ Jun 29th 2006 3:12PM]

the PS3 will in fact accept burned BD discs go to the Sony site and check the PS3s specs it i'll tell you there.

[TexasMike @ Jun 29th 2006 3:18PM]

The big question here is:

BluRay = Betamax
or
HDDVD = Betamax

The market isn't big enough for both.

[Allaun @ Dec 15th 2008 4:31PM]

Hi, I'd like to be mister obvious and say HD-DVD failed. :p Answer's your question AND preserves spacetime continuity!

[Brad @ Jun 29th 2006 4:04PM]

Is your big question asking which one is better, or which one will fail?

[Maxx @ Jun 29th 2006 4:17PM]

If Sony can't manufacture a dual layer BD in thier huge factorys what makes you think this burner can ?

[Brad @ Jun 29th 2006 7:05PM]

burned discs and pressed discs are totally different genius

pressed discs are physically stamped from a master (then layers built up)...
burned discs contain layers of inks that are burned by laser...

Sony is pressing discs, these are burned.

[Spiff @ Jun 30th 2006 2:57AM]

To post #1: I'm pretty sure that CD's can never be burned past 52x since the material will simply explode if run at any higher speeds. Newer optical medias have higher data density which mean you don't have to spin them as fast to read/write the same amount of data.

[Dave @ Jun 30th 2006 6:57AM]

I need one of these!

[KURTIS @ Jan 12th 2007 1:13PM]

with the huge amounts of data in bluray, the only way to get speed from these drives is to INCREASE the transfer rate and access time, by making them in SCSI.