bdr-101a
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Pioneer shipping BDR-101A Blu-ray drives
One step closer to store shelves near you, the Pioneer BDR-101A recorder is now shipping enabling you to save 25GB at a time on your handy BD-R or BD-RE disc. It comes with Roxio burning software and a few TDK blanks (it should for $1000). PC World had good impressions of the drive when they reviewed it recently, having no problem burning Blu-ray discs, albeit with the tradeoffs of no CD read/write, managed copy support and a lack of included video editing software. These are interesting strategies by the Blu-ray and HD DVD camps, while HD DVD is seen as having support from PC companies like Microsoft and HP; they have pushed a standalone box out first, while Blu-ray is pushing PC-compatible drives in advance of the standalone player launch.[Corrected manufacturer]
Pioneer's Blu-ray burner reviewed, comes out looking good
We can complain all we want about the price or the delays or the format war in general, but it all comes down performance for people who are actually going to be picking up Blu-ray burners like Pioneer's BDR-101A, which seems to come out a champ in PC Word's tests at least. Write speeds are at 45 minutes to fill a single 25GB BD-R disc at the 2X max burring speed, and while you could get that much data onto multiple single-layer DVD R discs with an 18x burner, it gives 10X double-layer DVD R burning a run for its money. The actual throughput for the burner clocks in at 67mbps, compared to the theoretical maximum of 72mbps for 2X BD-R. It actually took a bit longer to copy the data back off the disc. While the BDR-101A can manage a bit of DVD burning, at less than optimum speeds, there's no room left for a third laser for CD reading or writing. PC World also found the software package a bit thin, as this product is definitely targeted at professionals who have their own authoring solutions. Luckily, third party support isn't far behind, and an upgrade should be available to purchasers of the BDR-101A in order to author you own discs. The burner will also play Blu-ray movies, whenever they arrive on shelves, but it won't support the forthcoming managed content spec.
