Plextor Blu-ray PX-B900A burner to cost $1000

As we promised last month, we've finally got the price deets and specs on the new Plextor Blu-ray PX-B900A burner. A wad of 10 Benjamins (or 100 Hamiltons, take your pick) will get you this spankin' new drive -- compatible with 25 GB and 50 GB Blu-ray discs and it'll burn BD-R/RE media at 9 MBps, or 2X. For DVDs, it does an 8X burn for DVD-Rs, 4X DVD±R on dual-layer (DL) media, and 5X on DVD-RAM. You've also got support in there for 8X DVD+RW, 6X DVD-RW, 6X max DVD-ROM, 24X CD-R, 16X CD-RW, and 32X CD-ROM. Also, it comes with a package of software: Ulead's Video Studio 10 and Intervideo's WinDVD BD, a Blu-ray media application. Jeez, that's a mouthful. We still think that Blu-ray and HD DVD need to duke it out in a round or two of Street Fighter to settle this debacle.

[Via TG Daily]

[clicclic @ Aug 28th 2006 9:20PM]

Does this look correct:

Please lemme know if this is correct:

9 Mbps / 8 = 1.125 MB per second x 2500 MB (25GB) = 2812 seconds / 60 (sec/min) =

...46.8 minutes to burn a 25GB BD.

and 5625 / 60 =

... 93.75 minutes to burn a 50GB BD.

Not crazy horrible but it seems there's a lot of opportunity to screw up during the burn process.

[Teddy-O @ Aug 28th 2006 9:52PM]

clicclic, "not crazy horrible"...Geez, that's a lot of data, and doesn't sound much different than the last time I copied the 60 GB hard drive in my notebook. I'd be willing to bet that the time figures quoted do not include error correction or conformation, but even then, it seems pretty decent to me.

[Will @ Aug 28th 2006 10:15PM]

"What do blank discs cost? If my memory serves be correctly DVD burners were around $1000 when they first came out."
Thats about right, the first time I saw it was from Pioneer, and cost around $800. Blank DVDs cost around $10-15 each and burned at 2x.

Please do not post any comments about this being too expensie, or the disc cost too much, etc. This is a topic for people who cares or is curious about Blu-Ray burner's pricing

[PPB @ Aug 28th 2006 10:16PM]

The price of media...hmmm. If my memory serves me correctly, when I had betamax, the tapes were about $20/each. So I'd assume the Blow Ray would be about that. Of course, when HDDVD comes out...'nuf said.

[Bob @ Aug 28th 2006 10:23PM]

How long are we going to have to wait until HD DVD recorders for PCs come out?

[nick @ Aug 28th 2006 10:28PM]

I will still wait for a burner to burn HDDVD and Blu-ray, so that I can have both. I don't know when that will happen or if will ever happen, but when the prices of a blu-ray burner go down to about 150$ to 200$, then I will consider buying one...but other than that, then this is only a tool for people to start hacking the PS3! :D

[Rob T. @ Aug 28th 2006 10:49PM]

Hey Will, your memory does not serve you correctly, depending on when you got on board with DVD.

I bought my 1x Pioneer, scsi DVD burner in 1998 for 5k. A blank (which was hit or miss whether or not it would be read by most players on the market at the time) was $60. When you made a mistake, man did it hurt.

So I think the Blueray drive is still a steal as long as there is a business purpose behind it. I made a ton of money on that initial 5k investment. I may wait for a $500 BR drive before I bite this time.

[Kyle @ Aug 29th 2006 12:00AM]

When I first considered buying a DVDR drive it was about 1000 and about 30 for media. At that time there was a big debate over +R versus -R and now +- drives are the standard. If history repeats itself, maybe there will be BR/HD or something (as nick suggested).

[dLee @ Aug 29th 2006 12:03AM]

Clicclic... your calculation is incorrect. You need to take the 2500 MB and divide that by 1.125 MBps, resulting in about 37 minute burn time for a 25 GB BD. Then again, doesn't the article in TG say it's already in MBps? Granted that's probably extreme theoretical speeds so that "5 minute" burn will probably be 15 mins. Do correct if wrong...

[Will @ Aug 29th 2006 12:50AM]

"Hey Will, your memory does not serve you correctly, depending on when you got on board with DVD.

I bought my 1x Pioneer, scsi DVD burner in 1998 for 5k. A blank (which was hit or miss whether or not it would be read by most players on the market at the time) was $60. When you made a mistake, man did it hurt."
I stand corrected. But in my case the first time I've ever seen a DVD burner was at Best Buy, and it cost around $800.

[Dispraiser @ Aug 29th 2006 4:16AM]

For me, the burning war is the one place the HDDVD and BluRay war is already over. With movies I want to wait for a dual player because most studios are doing one format or the other, and I don't care to limit my choices. In burning, though, I don't see any reason to support HDDVD, and therefore don't really care if I ever get an HDDVD burner.

HDDVD read would be nice, though...

[justin @ Aug 29th 2006 10:18AM]

oh yeah, and the blu-ray blanks are $18.99 for both sony and pioneer

[Ben Wright @ Aug 29th 2006 11:09AM]

@First Comment

Your math is extremely wrong, but by sheer dumb luck you have about the right answer...

1) The article refers to 9 MB or MegaBYTES per second, not Mb or Megabits.
2) You are off by a power of 10 on your MB number (2500MB doesnt equal 25GB, its ~2.5GB)
3) You should be multiplying 25GB * 1024, not 1000 (or 100)
4) You should be dividing MB/s into total MB to get seconds - your calculation is (MB/s) * MB or MB^2/s, it shoudl be MB/ (MB/s) or s.

The correct math, and correct numbers:

25GB * 1024 = ~25600MB per layer
25600MB / 9MB/s = 2844s burn time per layer
2844s / 60 = 47.4 Minutes burn time per layer

So thats 47.4 Minutes (plus whatever extra time before/after to finish the disc) for a single layer
and 94.8 Minutes (plus whatever extra time before/after to finish the disc) for a double layer

[Tim @ Aug 29th 2006 8:45PM]

Hands up who has an HDCP compliant digital monitor, and video card + a powerful enough computer to actually use this playback software? There's a good reason why the Sony and Pioneer models don't include the playback software...

[justin @ Aug 31st 2006 1:38AM]

well, plextor is always nice, but best buy is going to have the pioneer blu-ray internal drive for $699 released mid-september.... not sure if even plextor fans will shell out an extra 300 bucks for basically the same thing

[R Nichols @ Sep 3rd 2006 6:27PM]

I saw a few of you talking about price. $1000 for the drive and $22 per disc is CHEAP. My first CD burner, Yamaha 1x was $50,000 in 1990 and the blank CDs were $85 each. The next round was a 4x Yamaha drive for $5000 and he CDs dropped to $15 each. I thought they made a mistake on the price and bough so many blanks that I still have some. First 1x DVD burner $12,000 with blank DVD about $50each. One dollar per gigabyte for discs? I was yearning for hard disks to come down to one dollar per megabyte.