Panasonic's internal LF-PB271JD drive burns Blu-ray at 4x

Nah, Panasonic's LF-PB271JD couldn't hold a candle to Sony's BWU-200S in a runway competition, but when it comes to performance, we'd say the two are practically neck and neck. This unit fits snuggly within any Windows-based machine lookin' for a 5.25-inch optical drive, and it has no problems burning dual-layer BD-Rs at a furious (ahem) 4x pace. Additionally, you'll find a SATA interface along with backup software bundled in, and just in case you're not working exclusively with BD-R, it can also toast BD-RE at 2x, DVD±R at 16x, DVD±R DL at 8x, DVD-RW at 6x, CD-R at 40x and CD-RW at 24x. Of course, you'll be paying through the nose for the luxuries presented when it lands on November 10th, but the ¥55,000 ($468) asking price is still a good bit lower than what Sony's demanding.

[Via Impress]

[Grant @ Oct 17th 2007 5:50PM]

It's interesting to see that they can make a burner for about the same cost as your typical BR player, kinda makes a home theater PC set-up seem like a decently priced option.

Now if only the blank media didn't cost $20 a piece.

[Slvrgun @ Oct 17th 2007 6:07PM]

But the media does and more.

[Dave @ Oct 17th 2007 6:59PM]

$20?

Then what this is:
http://www.supermediastore.com/tdk-blu-ray-disc-media-bd-r-disc-media.html

???

Price fall fast admit it.

[Grant @ Oct 17th 2007 7:27PM]

right, well unless you prefer to shop from BobsAwesomeDiscountOnlineWarehouseDirect.com, your going to find the average price for blank blu ray media in the $20 range.
Best buy is 21: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7943657&st=blu+ray&type=product&id=1152228561293

I'm sure we can argue about who found the lowest price where all night, but the point you so clearly missed was that at $15-20 a piece, it's still not worth it even if you are just looking to pirate movies. One mis-burn and that movie would have been cheaper to buy from the store.
It's also not worth if for storage, 500GB HDD= about $150. 10(x50GB=500) BR discs = $150 even at the cheapie price. not to mention you can't re-write unless you us BRD-ram, and i'm sure that has compatibility issue with the players.

[Typhoid Mary @ Oct 17th 2007 8:11PM]

Even at the $14 price tag that Dave links to thats still way to pricey for most...ummmm..collectors. I'll wait till the dust has settled from this format war and the price dips below the $9 mark before I make my purchase. Of course by then there will be the Holographic A Format vs Holographic B format fighting it out...oh well.

[steve @ Oct 17th 2007 9:39PM]

tdk is a well known manufacturer and supermediastore is a well known and reputable media store among those who buy media. I think it was only 3 yrs ago when DVD-DL was 15$ and 8-9 yrs ago when DVD was.

[Typhoid Mary @ Oct 18th 2007 12:31AM]

Thats why I didnt use DVD-DL 3 years ago and 8-9 yrs ago I was still using a CD burner :)

Just not cost effective for those that sail the seas...


ARRGGGHHHH!

[Sirocco @ Oct 17th 2007 6:08PM]

Early adopters be warned.

[huh @ Oct 17th 2007 6:31PM]

When it's "4x," isn't it 4X a lot of data (25GB?), as compared to 52X not very much data (700mb)? Seems to me its more uninformed and unnecessary Engadget editorial comments. Perhaps a bit of information could be provided to explain why this is only for a "Windows-based machine," when the form factor/interface should work with any desktop computer?

[peter @ Oct 17th 2007 6:33PM]

one more bump in speed, i'll be getting one in a heartbeat!

[ants @ Oct 17th 2007 6:49PM]

Wow! that drive has exactly the same bezel as the Panasonic 4x CD burner I got in 1997!

[Josh Warner @ Oct 17th 2007 7:07PM]

CDs topped out at 52x, where each "1x" roughly equals 150 Kb/s. Thus, a 52x CD drive (assuming constant write speed, which is rarely the case) writes data at 7.8 Mb/s. This is probably limited by the rotational speed of the disc, as the drive interface has far more bandwidth than this.

DVDs topped out at 16x, which each "1x" roughly equals 1380 Kb/s. Thus, a 16x DVD drive (same assumption as CD above) writes at 22 Mb/s. Almost three times higher than the CD write speed. I am fairly sure this is still well under the drive interface's limitations, and it cannot be limited by rotational speed as CDs spin far faster, so why DVDs have never gone faster is unknown to me. Could it be the stability of the underlying optical layers? If you know, I'd love to hear why.

Now, for Blu-ray each "1x" is defined as 36 Mb/s. Yes, a 1x Blu-ray drive writes data about 1.5 times faster than the fastest DVD writers available. Now we are at 4x, which equates to a bandwidth of 144 Mb/s; 7 times faster than the fastest DVD drives. This is actually getting somewhat dangerous; this bandwidth rate is approaching that of slower laptop drives which, if they cannot keep up, would create coaster after coaster burning at "maximum speed."

How much faster these drives can go may well depend on your hard drive's sustained transfer rate beyond about 6 or 8x.

[huh @ Oct 17th 2007 7:32PM]

Thanks for the info! Just as I suspected, the engadget folks were falling for an X number.

[Grant @ Oct 17th 2007 7:35PM]

i'm sure transfer rates won't be an issue, i don't think i have ever managed to get the burning speed up to max no matter what i have used be it CD or DVD burner.
Those numbers are max, not the usual, i'm sure when they say 4x they mean in the perfect conditions of : No pesky OS running to use the processor, super cooled network environment, perfect transfer speeds from the data source.

[Willen @ Oct 17th 2007 8:22PM]

There are 20x DVD drives available.

Although you'd be hard pressed to find official 20x blanks in stores, top quality DVD 16x blanks can be burned at 20x.

[suv4x4 @ Oct 17th 2007 9:06PM]

This is the reason SATA was created for. SATA can sustain easily any 6x, 8x or higher Blu Ray burner.

The interface is not a bottleneck with SATA. Look elsewhere.

[suv4x4 @ Oct 17th 2007 9:09PM]

Few more things: most modern burners cache hundreds of MB in RAM before they go to burn.

Second: buffer underrun on modern burners doesn't create coasters. The drive is able to stop writing, wait for the buffer to fill up, and resume.

Technically such disks will have a slightly prolonged blank at the place of resuming, but this doesn't matter to the reading drive.

[Grant @ Oct 18th 2007 12:55AM]

I'll take your word for it suv4x4,
but i have had my HP lightscribe DVD-DL burner make about 3 or 4 pretty coasters. Luckily i was only using lightscribe DVD-Rs(not DLs), so i got to burn the label and customize it, and they only cost like $1 each. lol

[Josh Warner @ Oct 18th 2007 2:46AM]

@ suv4x4 - You are right, SATA (1 or 2) can transfer far faster than any of the speeds I mentioned. I fear I was less than clear; the interface is not the problem, rather, the sustained transfer rate of 4200 or 5400 RPM laptop drives is what I bring into question.

Even hundreds of megs cached in RAM (though enough for CDs and DVDs) is not enough of a cache to maintain this rate over 25 gigs of data. Caching is intended to bridge momentary interrupts in hard drive streaming transfers (due to other programs accessing or excessive fragmentation), not to speed up the overall rate on disks greatly larger than the size of the RAM cache.

I had forgotten the buffer underrun protection abilities of most modern drives, but I would prefer to burn continuously without resorting to that. Maybe I am just unlucky, but my experiences with buffer underrun "protections" are far from coaster-free.

[Josh Warner @ Oct 17th 2007 7:08PM]

CDs topped out at 52x, where each "1x" roughly equals 150 Kb/s. Thus, a 52x CD drive (assuming constant write speed, which is rarely the case) writes data at 7.8 Mb/s. This is probably limited by the rotational speed of the disc, as the drive interface has far more bandwidth than this.

DVDs topped out at 16x, which each "1x" roughly equals 1380 Kb/s. Thus, a 16x DVD drive (same assumption as CD above) writes at 22 Mb/s. Almost three times higher than the CD write speed. I am fairly sure this is still well under the drive interface's limitations, and it cannot be limited by rotational speed as CDs spin far faster, so why DVDs have never gone faster is unknown to me. Could it be the stability of the underlying optical layers? If you know, I'd love to hear why.

Now, for Blu-ray each "1x" is defined as 36 Mb/s. Yes, a 1x Blu-ray drive writes data about 1.5 times faster than the fastest DVD writers available. Now we are at 4x, which equates to a bandwidth of 144 Mb/s; 7 times faster than the fastest DVD drives. This is actually getting somewhat dangerous; this bandwidth rate is approaching that of slower laptop drives which, if they cannot keep up, would create coaster after coaster burning at "maximum speed."

How much faster these drives can go may well depend on your hard drive's sustained transfer rate beyond about 6 or 8x.

[huh @ Oct 17th 2007 7:32PM]

Thanks for the info! Just as I suspected, the engadget folks were falling for an X number.

[Crayola @ Oct 17th 2007 7:15PM]

Dammit whatever happen to that $399 40GB PS3? A price drop in the UK boosted sales by 178%! This $399 PS3 would definitely be the death knell of all things HD DVD.

[Bestbuywrkr420 @ Oct 17th 2007 8:05PM]

The $400 PS3 is coming very soon. . .

[Rob @ Oct 17th 2007 7:24PM]

This is not bad considering that my first dvd burner cost me about $300+. And the writing speed may/may not, have been around 4x. Even my first cd burner cost me a little over $250.

[CUBSWILLWIN @ Oct 17th 2007 7:56PM]

I'll buy it if it comes in black...

[Sam @ Oct 17th 2007 8:28PM]

you know what this feels like? 1999. Why, might you ask? Because internal DVD players cost an insane amount for a burn capability just as good as this is for Blu-Ray. Yo, tech guys! listen up and take this advice. Wait 3 more years when the price comes down to 60 bucks for a 40x DL Blu-Ray drive with HD-DVD burn capabilities as well. I mean, it worked for the DVD standard, right?

[Max Fun @ Oct 17th 2007 8:58PM]

This is the reason that HD DVD needs to just die. BR is going to become the DVD replacement in PCs, this much is clear, and I would rather just use it to play BR movies on my computer as well, than to have to pony up for another HD DVD player or for an undoubtedly more expensive combo drive.

[HD 2 cents @ Oct 18th 2007 4:51PM]

"This is the reason that HD DVD needs to just die. BR is going to become the DVD replacement in PCs, this much is clear, and I would rather just use it to play BR movies on my computer as well, than to have to pony up for another HD DVD player or for an undoubtedly more expensive combo drive."

If you use any HD drive (be it HD-DVD or Blu-Ray) in a computer, I
hope you don't mind crappy, down-sampled audio. Currently, there is
no way to get a digital 7.1 signal to a receiver. Optical / Toslink
can only handle 5.1. Most HD content is only 5.1 now but even if you
wanted to get that HD, digital 5.1 signal to your receiver, you are
out of luck. Cyberlink PowerDVD has to downsample HD audio to no
higher than 48 kHz 16 bits-per-sample before sending to the audio
driver.

If someone knows of a way to get a non-downsampled audio stream from
an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, I would love to hear it...because I do not think
it exists. This is not even considering the total lack of mechanism
for getting any sort of digital 7.1 channel sound to a receiver.

Until there is a non-downsampled, 7.1-capable digital sound card (I
would guess this would involve an HDMI sound card that sends a
dummy video signal to carry the HD audio), an HD HTPC
is the poor, step child to stand-alone HD players.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Oct 17th 2007 9:03PM]

LG announced 6X BluRay burner (reads HD-DVDs too) for $499 months ago.

http://us.lge.com/aboutus/pressdetail/detail/press_TV%7CAudio%7CVideo_321_1.jhtml

I think I'd rather have the LG.

[r04 @ Oct 19th 2007 5:40AM]

Positive, but the error rate is unbearable, at least for me. I get about 8 BR's out of 20.

[Naveed @ Oct 17th 2007 10:45PM]

i could care less about burning. I just want an internal dual format player for less than $300.00 right now

[rootw0rm @ Oct 18th 2007 1:26AM]

I'll take the LG too. Panasonic makes the worst optical drives out there. I've used all the major brands and Panasonic has always been the worst.