Buffalo's Blu-ray burner hits 8x, BDA says wha?

For what it's worth, Buffalo just announced the world's fastest Blu-ray recorder capable of burning through your data at an 8x clip. The only problem is that BDA-approved media maxes out at 6x, assuming you can even find it. Available in Japan starting next month, the external USB 2.0 and eSATA BR-816SU2 and internal SATA BR-816FBS models hit that 8x recording speed on single-layer BD-R media only -- 2x for dual-layer BD-R, BD-RE, and LTH BD-R. CDs and DVDs are supported too naturally, with a max 16x burn to DVD±R or 48x/24x for CD-R/RW. Each drive comes bundled with Cyberlink's PowerDVD 7 suite and are priced at ¥46,700 (about $435) for the external drive or ¥41,000 (about $380) for the internal optical spinner.

[Via BIOS and CDRinf]

[Anderson @ Jul 24th 2008 12:08PM]

Blu-ray is coming about pretty fast!

[Craig @ Jul 24th 2008 12:21PM]

In terms of being available across a variety of products and platforms...YES.

In terms of being available at attractive price points that will spur mass adoption...NO.

[KarlW @ Jul 24th 2008 2:29PM]

Blu-Ray burners aren't that expensive, actually. I thought they would be, but when I checked on Google Shopping, they were going for about £200. Not nearly as expensive as I thought.

I've got the money set aside for a Nehalem Mac Pro. Once I get it, I might just buy a Blu-Ray burner. Great for data backups, and most of them support HD-DVD as well (I can watch Apollo 13 in HD, finally!)

[Wwhat @ Jul 24th 2008 5:54PM]

ha, poor brits, it's always $200 €200 and £200, so you end up being the most expensive market.

[Curtis Joslin @ Jul 24th 2008 12:11PM]

Glad to see them making burn speeds faster, now we need it to get cheaper faster.

How many MBps is 8x for Blu-ray Disks anyway?

[NoAndThen @ Jul 24th 2008 12:17PM]

2x is 72Mb/s (or 9MB/s) so... x4 should be around 288Mb/s (or 36MB/s)

fucking sweet.

[Kamokazi @ Jul 24th 2008 12:24PM]

And your average SATA II hard drive reads around 60MB or so (bigger drives are a bit quicker). So at 8x, we're starting to see a HDD bottleneck.

[kal326 @ Jul 24th 2008 12:59PM]

@NoAndThen

I think your math is a bit off
1X = 36Mbit/s
2x = 72Mbit/s
4x = 144Mbit/s
4x 288Mbit/s
8x= 288 Mbit/s or 36MB/s more or less

[KC @ Jul 24th 2008 4:33PM]

@kal326

He's talking about 72Mb x4 (TIMES FOUR) = 288Mb, not the 4x drive speed

[kal326 @ Jul 24th 2008 5:20PM]

Yeah, 4x versus x4.....
Damn math word problems, who really gives a fuck where to trains meet if one left LA at 4pm going east at........

[NoAndThen @ Jul 24th 2008 12:14PM]

This is very exciting to me. I remember watching dvd burners go from $500 to $350 and thinking 'almost there...'

Looks like I may be buying a BD burner for christmas if they can get blank media prices down a wee bit more.

[ShadowKain @ Jul 24th 2008 2:55PM]

See your correction of your WONDERFUL math skills above. M with a small b is mega bit, yet also you wrote the same data speed for 4x AND 8x...I think not only is your math off, but YOU are the moron my friend.

[NoAndThen @ Jul 24th 2008 3:20PM]

@shadowkain:

No, YOU are the moron, dipshit. READ, then comment. At no point did i confuse megaBIT and megaBYTE, you dolt. Read it again.

I wrote x4 which means MULTIPLIED BY in any math system ever. I DID NOT write 4x.

Therefor, 2x(!) x4(multiplied by 4)=8x! Holy shit! Welcome to first grade dude.

And thanks for the correction kal326, you wrote the same exact fucking thing I did. So, again, YOU are the moron, sir.

NoAndThen @ Jul 24th 2008 12:17PM
2x is 72Mb/s (or 9MB/s) so... x4 should be around 288Mb/s (or 36MB/s)

kal326 @ Jul 24th 2008 12:59PM
@NoAndThen

I think your math is a bit off
1X = 36Mbit/s
2x = 72Mbit/s
4x = 144Mbit/s
4x 288Mbit/s
8x= 288 Mbit/s or 36MB/s more or less

[ddub @ Jul 24th 2008 12:32PM]

Compared to when CD and DVD burner's first came out, this seems like a low price early on.

[digitallysick @ Jul 24th 2008 12:42PM]

Buffalo products are worth it, very high quality. I have a buffalo router and i love it, so i can recommend buffalo. One day after an electrical storm my router quit working, i sent it back, they mailed me a whole brand new router!

[Michael Scrip @ Jul 24th 2008 12:55PM]

Does Buffalo make the drive? Or is it a rebadged Sony or Lite-On, etc?

[xValentine @ Jul 24th 2008 12:43PM]

Come on BDA, only 6x ?

You can do better than that!

[pekosROB @ Jul 24th 2008 12:45PM]

Mr. Thomas Ricker,
Excellent beginning there quoting a Buffalo Springfield album name and tying it into the post! Kudos to you!

[thecodeman @ Jul 24th 2008 12:51PM]

What?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Springfield#Discography

[Kane @ Jul 24th 2008 1:07PM]

Song 1 on channel 1 in their self-titled 8-track. Some things aren't on a wiki, and have to be lived. ;)

[thecodeman @ Jul 24th 2008 1:32PM]

He did say "Album Name", which is why I didnt catch it...

[Mitch @ Jul 24th 2008 2:48PM]

its also the name of a book if you look at the first bullet of the bibliography on that wiki.

[WarMouse @ Jul 24th 2008 3:37PM]

I mean, he uses "For What It's Worth," which shouldn't have to be looked up in the first place. I'm not saying everyone should know all of Buffalo Springfield, but if you know one song, that's got to be it.

[jason51873 @ Jul 24th 2008 12:51PM]

Sweet $30 drink coasters here i come!

[kal326 @ Jul 24th 2008 12:52PM]

"Wha", i kan haz 8x?

[Dan @ Jul 24th 2008 2:06PM]

Youz kan haz ate ex!

[Mike @ Jul 24th 2008 1:38PM]

I'm just curious, how long would it take to back up a Blu-Ray disc?

[Raymond @ Jul 24th 2008 1:58PM]

And USB 2 is going to be the bottleneck then

Even with Intel chipset, USB 2 generally can't go faster than 35mb/s (MSC devices)

Not to mention VIA or ATI or SiS chipsets which some can't even reach 30mb/s

It should come with an eSATA port, or Firewire 800 for Macs.

[NoAndThen @ Jul 24th 2008 3:23PM]

read the article again, one of them does come with eSATA, and there are other computers with FW800 besides macs, dude.

[Dejan @ Jul 24th 2008 3:59PM]

It does come with eSATA already...

[edward @ Jul 24th 2008 2:21PM]

I may get something like this soon... soon as I can get a USB powered one not dissimilar in size to the MBA one.

[z0phi3l @ Jul 24th 2008 6:19PM]

Someone call me when a decent name brand internal PC burner hits ~200, then I'll take the plunge

[wtran168 @ Jul 24th 2008 7:53PM]

Those of you complaining about prices, Blu-ray is cheap compared to what CD and DVD burners were offered for years ago. I remember my first CD burner of 4x @$300, back in 2000...and it took forever to burn anything not to mention the coasters being generated. DVD was similarly priced when i bought in at 03/04, but the reliability of the media was way ahead of CD in terms of resilience to scratches. Hope to do the same with Blu-ray soon when I get a new PC.

[neoanime @ Jul 26th 2008 2:37AM]

Consumers say "YES.....but we will wait till its cheaper......"

[Dave @ Jul 24th 2008 12:11PM]

Keep waiting. This is winner to me :)

[Can @ Jul 26th 2008 5:08AM]

When I first read about Blu-Ray two or three years ago they said they will come in capacities in 25, 50, 100, 200GB. Well, I'm waiting for quad layer (should be 100 GB) burners (and associative disks at a fair price).

When DVD writers came out I didn't wait and just bought one. It could not even write DVD-R, it wasn't fast enough, no dual layer (I didn't use dual layer DVDs anyway but BluRay will have MUCH higher capacity so it's more likely I WILL use multilayer disks), it was crappy (failed a lot etc) Then I've waited two years and bought an LG Super Multi (for about same price), which I have not even a single problem with. So, moral of this story: Wait more. Blu Ray has still some way to go.