Pioneer PC-Based Blu-ray Disc Drive

[Patrick]

Found this link from Dec 9th 2005.
http://www.biosmagazine.co.uk/article.php?id=2550

Pioneer's BD1.5 is billed as the industry's first PC-based Blu-ray Disc drive. Actually, the first Blu-ray recorder was unveiled by Sony on March 3, 2003, and was introduced to the Japanese market in April that year.

Designed to kick-start the next-generation of digital media storage and playback, Blu-ray utilises shorter wavelength blue lasers to efficiently, precisely write and read high-definition Blu-ray discs and DVDs. There was little technical information available on the Pioneer drive at time of writing, but the internal unit is likely to appear early next year worldwide.

Blu-ray Disc (BD) is a next-generation optical disc format meant for storage of high-definition video and high-density data. The Blu-ray standard was jointly developed by a group of consumer electronics and PC companies called the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA). As compared to the HD DVD format, its main competitor, Blu-ray has more information capacity per layer, 25- instead of 15GB, but may initially be more expensive to support.

Blu-ray gets its name from the shorter wavelength (405-nm) of a 'blue' (technically blue-violet) laser that allows it to store substantially more data than a DVD, which has the same physical dimensions but uses a longer wavelength (650-nm) red laser.

A single-layer Blu-ray disc can record up to 23.3-, 25-, or 27GB, which is enough for approximately 4 hours of high-definition video with audio. A dual-layer BD can fit 46.6-, 50-, or 54GB, enough for approximately 8 hours of HD video. Capacities of 100GB and 200GB, using four and eight layers respectively, are currently being researched. TDK has already announced a prototype four-layer 100GB disc.

The BD-RE (rewritable) standard is available, along with the BD-R (recordable) and BD-ROM formats, which became available in mid-2004, as part of version 2.0 of the Blu-ray specifications. BD-ROM pre-recorded media are to be available by early 2006. Also, in addition to 12cm discs, an 8cm variation for use with camcorders is planned that will have a capacity of 15GB.