OWC introduces first external Blu-ray drive with quad interface

It's debatable whether or not Apple is losing its touch with FireWire, but you can rest assured that OWC hasn't. Said outfit has just announced the industry's first Blu-ray external drive with a quad interface, meaning you can link it up to your PC or Mac via FireWire 400, FireWire 800, USB 2.0 or eSATA. The Mercury Pro SW-5583 arrives with the capability to toast BD-Rs at a rate of 4x and includes a pair of 25GB BD-R discs for $499.99; the closely related Mercury Pro SW-5583T throws in a full retail version of Roxio Toast 9 Titanium (OS X) and sells for $579.99. Now, if only we could convince Steve that Blu-ray and Macs could indeed get along together, we'd really be satisfied. Full release after the break.

OWC ANNOUNCES INDUSTRY'S FIRST BLU-RAY EXTERNAL DRIVES WITH "QUAD INTERFACE"

OWC Mercury Pro Features Quad Interface for FireWire800/400, USB 2.0, & eSATA – for Mac and PC 4X Speed Writes up to 50GB, Reads/Writes HD-DVD, DVD/DVD-R, CD-R/RW Discs

October 22, 2008 -- Woodstock, IL -- Other World Computing (OWC®) http://www.macsales.com, a leading Mac and PC technology company, announced today its new line of OWC Mercury Pro™ Blu-ray "Quad Interface" external drive solutions. The first Blu-ray external drives on the market offering a "Quad Interface" of FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0, and eSATA, the OWC Mercury Pro drives feature 4X Blu-ray disc write speed for burning up to 1 gigabyte of data per minute; a data transfer rate up to 150MB per second; Plug and Play connection flexibility; and the convenience of compatibility with both Windows and Macintosh systems.

Burn up to 50GB per Blu-ray Disc and Read/Write to All Optical Media
Immediately available and priced starting at $499.99, the Mercury Pro Blu-ray external drive solutions are ideal for consumers with large amounts of High-Def or other video, photos, music, and data files that they want to archive or retrieve using optical media. Mercury Pro Blu-ray drives read and/or write virtually all optical media, including Blu-ray, HD-DVD, DVD-RAM, and CD-R/RW. The drives provide the well-known advantages of Blu-ray, such as high-capacity storage (burn up to 50GB per disc, enough space for a four hour High-Def movie); full high-quality HD Picture; and Surround Sound capabilities. In addition, the new OWC Mercury Pro Blu-ray drives now have write performance twice as fast as previous Mercury Pro Blu-ray external drive models.

Pricing for OWC Mercury Pro Blu-ray Write and Read external drive solutions:
* OWC Mercury Pro SW-5583: $499.99. Writes and reads Blu-ray, DVD, DVD-RAM, CD-R/RW discs. Includes all connection cables and two 25GB BD-R discs.

* OWC Mercury Pro SW-5583T: $579.99. Writes and reads Blu-ray, DVD, DVD-RAM, CD-R/RW discs. Includes all connection cables, starter media, and full retail version of Roxio Toast 9 Titanium (Mac OS X).

OWC Mercury Pro Blu-ray "Quad Interface" external drive solutions have been fully tested for compatibility with most Apple and Windows built-in and third party DVD/CD tools and players, including Apple iTunes, Apple Disc Burner, Apple iDVD 5, Apple DVD Studio Pro, EMC Retrospect Express, NTI DragonBurn, Roxio Toast, Roxio Easy Media Creator, and Nero Burning.

For more information on the OWC Mercury Pro Blu-ray external drive solutions, visit:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/optical-drives/

[y3k.nik @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:56AM]

How is that for a "Bagful of hurt"?

[BagOfHurt @ Oct 22nd 2008 1:16PM]

I tried to Google "bag of hurt" and I don't think anyone's really used that term before in history.

[bob @ Oct 22nd 2008 1:29PM]

because it doesnt include the capability / licensing for movie playback.

[Jash Sayani @ Oct 22nd 2008 11:56AM]

"Blu-ray is a bag of hurt."

Want to Low Rank..? Please visit Apple.com OR E-Mail Steve !!!

[Joseph @ Oct 22nd 2008 12:28PM]

understood the quote, but buried for delivery. That comment was a bag of hurt.

[michas_pi @ Oct 22nd 2008 12:04PM]

I see FireWire.

I'm in for three!

...

Guys, I just accidentally my whole savings account. What do I do?

[Joseph @ Oct 22nd 2008 12:28PM]

I guess the solution is simple. Next time don't just accidentally your whole savings account

[iEye @ Oct 22nd 2008 12:06PM]

No Qflix logo?, how will I ever get my movies? do not want.

[Mike @ Oct 22nd 2008 12:10PM]

The added interfaces surely provide flexibility, but alas neither FW800 nor eSATA will improve burn times. USB2 and FW400 both will support the max data rate for 54x CD, 22x DVD, and even 6x Blu-ray burning.

In other words, the faster interfaces are added expense and overkill.

From blu-ray.com FAQ:
How fast can you read/write data on a Blu-ray disc?


According to the Blu-ray Disc specification, 1x speed is defined as 36Mbps. However, as BD-ROM movies will require a 54Mbps data transfer rate the minimum speed we're expecting to see is 2x (72Mbps). Blu-ray also has the potential for much higher speeds, as a result of the larger numerical aperture (NA) adopted by Blu-ray Disc. The large NA value effectively means that Blu-ray will require less recording power and lower disc rotation speed than DVD and HD-DVD to achieve the same data transfer rate. While the media itself limited the recording speed in the past, the only limiting factor for Blu-ray is the capacity of the hardware. If we assume a maximum disc rotation speed of 10,000 RPM, then 12x at the outer diameter should be possible (about 400Mbps). This is why the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) already has plans to raise the speed to 8x (288Mbps) or more in the future.

Blu-ray is surely promising for data storage on the Mac, but until Apple does something with OS X for a Blu-ray player that supports AACS, there won't be any Hollywood movie playing goodness.

Missing from the bundle are any Windows applications; especially the CyberLink PowerDVD Blu-ray player, or any burning apps. Compatibility is implied from the description, but no Windows apps are bundled.

Mike

[Bad Beaver @ Oct 22nd 2008 1:21PM]

What about the daisy-chain?
If you face a "Firewire 800 only" scenario as on the new MBP you can hook this up to your external harddrive or whatnot without slowing down the bus.

[Xenoterranos @ Oct 22nd 2008 4:05PM]

Seriously though, who daisy chains firewire devices? And furthermore, as more than a one-off stopgap measure? I'm just wondering since I've never encountered it IRL before.

[rita hainsworth @ Oct 22nd 2008 12:12PM]

nice...and so stylish too.

[digitallysick @ Oct 22nd 2008 12:14PM]

At the price and write speeds i have no desire to want to buy one. I could get a 2tb external harddrive for less than that cost.

[justsilhouettes @ Oct 22nd 2008 12:19PM]

rad....
still no way to *play* blue ray discs on a mac.

but i guess at least i can make them spin a few times and then eject them.

[scootinger @ Oct 22nd 2008 12:28PM]

This is RIDICULOUSLY overpriced. One can buy a SATA Lite-On 4x BD-R writer for $210 at Newegg....there's good chance that it's the very same one that OWC uses. Then the two BD-R discs cost less than $10 apiece. And I'm not sure about the enclosure...but there's no way that it would cost any more than $100. Why does this get on the front page of engadget?

[BagOfHurt @ Oct 22nd 2008 1:26PM]

Incorrect, my friend.. this drive uses a Panasonic SW-5583, this is a much more industrious drive (since it's built by Panasonic) - the LG burner (that may be what you mean instead of Lite-On) will last about 1/3 -1/2 as long in terms of product life.. the laser diode is much lower quality in the LG model.

[Xenoterranos @ Oct 22nd 2008 4:07PM]

Ok cool, so when the 200$ cheaper device burns out, BRD drives will be commodities, and you can replace your 200$ device for 50$ instead of replacing your 400$ device for 50$.

[Zunavio @ Oct 22nd 2008 12:31PM]

So... What kind of TOASTer do we need now?

[the woof @ Oct 22nd 2008 1:19PM]

The bag of hurt is not the media type blu-ray but rather the movie format. Macbidouille/hardmac had once a rumor that the blu-ray consortium was asking for a drm inclusion at the kernel level... My guess is that the "bag of hurt" refers to the drm not the capacity of burning data to a blu-ray single or dual layer media.

[Kevin @ Oct 22nd 2008 2:20PM]

The price really needs to come down on these drives if they are going to become mainstream.

[TRAFFICBLOWS @ Oct 22nd 2008 3:30PM]

Where can I just buy the case???? I don't need BR right now... but I do have a regular DVD-RW that could use the case.

There's only a handful of 5.25" eSATA enclosures out there... WTF!! Where is the competition??

[jared @ Oct 22nd 2008 5:26PM]

they sell the case alone:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW924AL1K/

$109.

[Look @ Oct 22nd 2008 4:02PM]

An external bag-of-hurt! iTunes downloads all the way:)

[roger @ Oct 22nd 2008 4:16PM]

Jobs likely couldn't get a price-break he was looking for from the bluray manufacturers, and given the usual ridiculous markup of premium hardware, figured that the final cost would be laughable. Jobs is waiting for a bluray pricing slide in the near future.

[Magallanes @ Oct 22nd 2008 7:49PM]

Currently blu-ray is like Vista.... is bling-bling also expensive and unnecessary.

[steve @ Oct 22nd 2008 8:48PM]

seriously, this is news? owc dropped a drive in an enclosure. wait, wait!!

1. combine blu-ray drive and enclosure
2. ???
3. profit!

[roger @ Oct 22nd 2008 9:48PM]

Correct me if I'm wrong... USB 2.0 transfer rate is 60 MB/xmax, and blu-ray 1x is 4.5 MB/s (actual movie play rates utilize around 2x or 9 MB/s)... which should mean that until blu-ray speeds hit 14x, there's no point to go with eSATA. With eSATA going up to 300 MB/s, I'm not seeing why there would be much advantage to using it over USB2.0 - except maybe in terms of avoiding taxing the bridge.