Panasonic prepares 4x DL BD-R burner: 50GB in 46 minutes

Panasonic is set to join LG with the introduction of their own 4x speed BD-R recorder. However, while LG's GBW-H10N Blu-ray recorder burns are limited to single-layer media, Panny is boasting of a 4x burn to a dual-layer BD-R platter. That's 50GB in 46 minutes in case you're keeping track. No pictures or price but you can expect Panny to go big-and-fast with product sometime later this year.

[Via Impress]

[Craig @ Jul 3rd 2007 8:23AM]

Nice for backing up individual movies, however, by the time these burners and discs come down to a reasonable price, the average PC HDD will be 1TB and it'll still take a big stack of discs and a huge chunk of time to back up your HDD to optical media.

[Nate @ Jul 3rd 2007 11:32AM]

Because, now that blank DVDs are a reasonable price, we can back up our 500+ GB hard drives without a big stack of optical media, and in a short amount of time.

Or, have you just not noticed that nearly all backup media is smaller than the source drives, and always has been?

[Craig @ Jul 3rd 2007 12:09PM]

@Nate, you missed my point, which was the same one you're making. That's why I said it will "still" take a big stack of discs. With DVDs, as with BDs, backing up all your data is either too expensive (when the tech is first introduced) or too cumbersome (a few years down the road).

[JeffDM @ Jul 3rd 2007 1:24PM]

Nice try Chadow. Sony does not own or control the Blu-Ray format. They are just a well-known member of the consortium.

[Jon @ Jul 3rd 2007 9:00AM]

This will be good for backing up my lossless master copy of all my ripped CDs. No matter how huge HDDs get, nothing beats having a backup on an optical disc kept separately from my PCs.

[Big @ Jul 3rd 2007 9:01AM]

HDDVD:

Don't let the door hit you in the ASS on your way out !!!

[chadow @ Jul 3rd 2007 9:10AM]

Don't let Sony's b@lls hit your chin on the way in.

[kingofwale @ Jul 3rd 2007 10:17AM]

awww, love Anti-Sony fanboys

Where or where in this article did it mention Sony? What an idiot

[chadrick @ Jul 3rd 2007 10:32AM]

"awww, love Anti-Sony fanboys

Where or where in this article did it mention Sony? What an idiot"

not sure if "Blu-ray" would be a Sony clue or not, but what do I know.

[chadow @ Jul 3rd 2007 10:41AM]

I'm not anti Sony at all. I own and enjoy many Sony products. I'm not a "fan boy" of any product or manufacturer. I just hate reading stupid comments that go back and forth between the BD and HDDVD children every time an article like this shows up. Anyone that has such a passion about one or the other has obvious underlying reasons, the most common of which I am sure, is the ownership of a PS3 and that connection to Sony and Bluray disks.

So yeah, I guess my comment was a little brash and presumptuous. But it was just as out of place as the HDDVD comment.

[Natedog @ Jul 3rd 2007 11:03AM]

I personally think BluRay seems to be the superior format, and I'm no Sony fanboy and I don't own a PS3. It just seems like it's better, or perhaps it's just caught on quicker and therefore seems like the better choice for consumers. The HDDVD comment isn't out of place; BluRay and HDDVD are competing products, and this is a pretty big step for BluRay, creating yet more trouble for HDDVD. That being said, your comment about "Sony's b@lls" did make me chuckle a little bit.

[Dave @ Jul 3rd 2007 1:24PM]

My only concern is from a general consumers point of view: No one company should own the rights to any particular format. HDDVD is an open-standard, not a proprietary format as BD is.

Anyone who works in television knows just how much Sony can jerk people around for their own benefit (BetaSX format). Not the kind of company I want to take home with me.

[JeffDM @ Jul 3rd 2007 1:21PM]

Nice try. Sony doesn't actually own or control the Blu-Ray format.

[JeffDM @ Jul 3rd 2007 1:26PM]

Oops, my previous comment didn't show up so I thought I had to make a new one.

[Serengeti @ Jul 3rd 2007 1:35PM]

Sorry?? Are you confusing BluRay and Sony with HDDVD and Toshiba??

Sony developed BluRay in 2002. It was largely based on another format that Sony developed prior to that. Sony benefits from BluRay not only from player sales but from content control (they own everything from the cameras movies are shot on, to the formats they're played on to the players used to play them). HDDVD was not developed by any one company, and it has been adopted by the official DVD consortium as a replacement for DVD.

Am I crazy, or does it sound like Sony owns one, while the other is an officially adopted, open standard?

[JeffDM @ Jul 3rd 2007 2:15PM]

No, Sony is not the sole designer that I'm aware. Sony, Matsushita (JVC, Panasonic), Pioneer and I think a couple other Japanese electronics companies co-developed the format. Both the format and the consortium were announced on Feb 2002. The AOD, the precursor of HD-DVD, was developed by NEC & Toshiba, not just Toshiba. That format later adopted by the DVD consortium.

I'm not sure I'd call DVD and HD-DVD an open standard. They may be more open than BluRay, I really don't know, but there are still fees and contracts required to legally make the hardware and software either way.

[Rick wilson @ Jul 3rd 2007 1:39PM]

People don't get that Panasonic is the designer of Blu-ray. Blu-ray disc acts like an optical HDD, just like Panasonic's DVD-RAM technology. There's a reason Pansonic can push 4X 50GB media first, they invented it.