Alienware introduces 4x Blu-ray drives for desktops

Alienware, never afraid of spec'ing its machines just a little bit ahead of the curve, has just introduced 4x Blu-ray drives into its Area-51 7500, Aurora 7500, Area-51 ALX, and Aurora ALX desktops, making the systems the first in the industry (or so they claim) to carry the faster drives. The new additions to the PCs will offer a significant performance increase in reading and writing Blu-ray discs (a 100 percent increase, in case you're not doing the math), which should make burning those massive discs just slightly more tolerable. Of course, the whole shebang is backward-compatible with CD and DVD discs, per typical Blu-ray spec, and will set you back an additional $600. Available right now.

[bee @ Aug 23rd 2007 1:05PM]

I'd rather get a PS3 for that price, not that i'm a fan of sonny, but everything by Alienware is dead overpriced...

[bee @ Aug 23rd 2007 1:11PM]

A USB HD-DVD frive for Xbox only cost like 200 dollars.
Beside now Dreamwork and Paramont dropped Blu-ray.

[kuonji @ Aug 23rd 2007 1:22PM]

Thanks for the news?

[Jimmy @ Aug 23rd 2007 1:30PM]

@bee

Which of the two devices you mention burns Blu-ray discs? The article is talking about adding a 4X Blu-ray burner to an Alienware desktop. Alienware actually offers your choice of either a 2x burner ($400) or this 4x burner ($600).

Oh, and just for comparison. Neither of the two devices you mention work at 4x speed.

[Adam @ Aug 23rd 2007 1:34PM]

You do realize that this is a 4x Blu-Ray BURNER, right? That's most of the price difference between your beloved HD-DVD addon for your 360. There are huge differences between those drives. First of all this drive writes 3 different formats (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray)....the 360 drive doesn't write to any format. That adds a lot of complexity (and price) to making a drive. That may not account for the large price difference as Alienware does have a large markup, but it makes up the vast majority of it. I'm not going to get onto the topic of the "format war;" I just wanted to illustrate the reason for the large price difference between these two drives.

[Joca @ Aug 24th 2007 6:26AM]

We are talking about PC users here, so, I guess blu-ray's increased disk capacity, and better disc resistance, is a major plus for storage...I'm not looking forward to watching Transformers on my Desktop. PC users should probably skip hd-dvd... Too much for my wallet? Definitely.

[MacGuru @ Aug 23rd 2007 4:03PM]

That's Dreamworks animation... Dreamworks has already released Norbit (yuck!) on Blu Ray.
Maybe if the CEO of Dreamworks has 1 more brain cell left he would release GLADIATOR!

:)

[coolant8 @ Aug 23rd 2007 1:43PM]

I actrually don't need to burn pirated movies, thanks anyway.

[Yannis @ Aug 23rd 2007 1:56PM]

I actually need to make large (25 to 50GB) back ups. I actually need to back up HD footage and make BD discs from my consumer HD camcorder.

[Aaron @ Aug 23rd 2007 1:44PM]

These drives may be good for backing up data but HTPCs are currently handicapped for HD content playback.

The only PC player for HD content is buggy and, more importantly, downsamples the audio (that is PowerDVD HD, btw). According to AACS compliance rule, PowerDVD HD has to protect AACS decrypted content from digital copy. Since there's no secure protection between the AP and the audio driver yet, PowerDVD has to downsample HD audio to 48 kHz before sending the signal to the driver. AnyDVD-HD offers no benefit because this is not an HDCP issue. Also, there is no way to get even the 48kHz, down-sampled, digital 7.1 signal to a receiver from a PC. There are no HDMI audio cards and the HDMI video cards only have a 5.1 Toslink/Optical pass through. Toslink/optical is not able to carry a 7.1 signal; only 5.1.

[coolant8 @ Aug 23rd 2007 1:46PM]

it's not like i'm going to link my tv to my pc.

[Yannis @ Aug 23rd 2007 1:59PM]

It is like my PC has been playing my BD-R media on my TV for a while now.

[Chris Clark @ Aug 23rd 2007 1:56PM]

Do they even have blank BD-RE media out that is capable of burning at 4x? If not, isn't this jumping the gun a little bit?

[Yannis @ Aug 23rd 2007 2:05PM]

Do not know that they are available but they were announced for this summer: http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=20934

[coolant8 @ Aug 23rd 2007 2:03PM]

Despite of the BR discs being more portable, isn't it a bit slow and ironically less reliable to use discs to back up? $600 is after all quite a lot to blow on a disc burner.

[mattweiler @ Aug 23rd 2007 3:23PM]

It's like any new technology.

Granted Alienware shouldn't be adding this to their systems, but $600 is really not that much.

When the 1st Blu-ray burners were released a few months ago, they were around $1000

just give it time

[mattydread @ Aug 23rd 2007 3:07PM]

I thought Dell had bought Alienware a while back.

[teej @ Aug 23rd 2007 3:38PM]

THIS JUST IN...Blu-ray blows, Alienware gouges customers with ridiculous margins.

[MacGuru @ Aug 23rd 2007 4:05PM]

This just in: There are no DVD HD writers.... Haha!

[teej @ Aug 23rd 2007 4:07PM]

THIS JUST IN: no one cares

[MacGuru @ Aug 23rd 2007 4:10PM]

This just in: GROW THE F*CK UP

[teej @ Aug 23rd 2007 4:17PM]

THIS JUST IN: Mac's blow too, and so does their owners' ipods, PS3s, iTVs, iPhones, Blu-rays, and AppleTalk.

[Landlocked @ Aug 23rd 2007 3:44PM]

I'm personally worried about the prospect of cramming 50 GB onto one disc. What is the fault tolerance on these puppies when it comes to laser over time/dye fades/scratches?

[MacGuru @ Aug 23rd 2007 4:11PM]

Oooh, I am sure NOBODY has ever thought about that... Maybe we should worry now about the MTBF of 750GB hard drives or maybe just switch back to 5.25" floppy disks.

[Landlocked @ Aug 23rd 2007 4:18PM]

Lighten up. At least I'm not physically handling the media when it comes to HDD. Per GB, the latter is still the cheaper (and faster) option.

[MacGuru @ Aug 23rd 2007 4:31PM]

All I can say is: Embrace progress and quit attacking everything that is non-Microsoft backed.

[Landlocked @ Aug 23rd 2007 5:15PM]

Dude -- I just finished building an Ubuntu server.

[denny LH @ Aug 23rd 2007 11:06PM]

不错的选择，反正蓝光也是趋势。

[red @ Aug 24th 2007 6:56AM]

u just owned em. Good job.

[bee @ Aug 24th 2007 2:52PM]

是的...