BenQ's BW1000 Blu-ray Disc recorder for PCs hitting Japan: writes 50GBs for less
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Dec 19th 2006 9:06AM
posted Dec 19th 2006 9:06AM
It's well past August but we're finally seeing the release of BenQ's Blu-ray Disc recorder for PCs. Well, in Japan anyway where this much heralded, dual-layer (50GB) SATA player/recorder built by Philips is set to hit before the month is up. Your ¥89,900 (about $760) -- reduced from the $1000 originally quoted -- buys you a trio of tricks: read/write BD, DVD, and CD media at speeds up to 2x BD-R/RE, 1x dual-layer BD-R/RE, 12x DVD+/-R, and 32x CD-R -- and that's just a smattering of media supported. Bundled PowerDVD 6 software allows you to play back studio Blu-ray Disc flicks at a full, 1920x1200 resolution under Vista, you know, just as long as your video card and monitor support HDCP. But then you know that by now, right? Expect to hear about these popping for the US and beyond any day now.
[Via Impress]
BD-RE DL 1x? How long that will take?!
Here are some other Blu-ray drives which have better speeds...
http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=2615
look at that. Something i can do on my native resolution.
its going to come down to getting a Blue-Ray & HD dvd drive.
Newegg and ZipZoomFly already have the Lite-On 2X Blu-ray burner in stock for $600 US with free shipping. It's Serial ATA and comes with the player software too, I'm so close to ordering one. The other two fairly cheap released US models are the 2X Panasonic which can be found for $650, and the 2X Sony which can be found for $700. Basically, even if that price includes Japan's 5% VAT, the drive isn't that tempting.
Oops, I forgot to note the Lite-ON isn't dual layer. However, the Panasonic and Sony models are, and are both available for $50-100 less than this drives current price.
Not interesting until the media is actually reasonably priced. I can get 16x DVD+R media for less than 20 cents a disk. That means a 25GB BD-R should be