BenQ brags of Blu-ray first with new drive

[erdega79]

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/70302/be...new-drive.html

BenQ is the first of the major peripheral manufacturers to announce a high-definition optical drive. Its Blu-ray unit was developed jointly with Philips and was unveiled at CeBit, Hannover. It will be available in the second half of this year.
The DBD Triple Writer BW1000 is built around Philips' triple-laser optical pick-up, which enables blue, infra-red and red lasers to share the same optical pathway. As a result drives are capable of read/write support for CDs and DVDs in addition to Blu-ray.

Blu-ray discs will be available in two sizes: 25GB single-layer and 50GB double-layer.

The Blu-ray format received a major boost this week when Apple joined the board of the Blu-ray Disc Association. It is one of two rival high-definition disc formats, the other being HD-TV. The major film studios are split over which technology to back.

Sonic Solutions, which manufactures leading optical disc authoring software for both Mac OS X and Windows, has also backed Blu-ray, announcing in January that its applications would provide Blu-ray burning capabilities by the summer.

The company used BenQ's new drive to show its new AuthorScript Blu-ray Data Recording Software Development Kit (SDK) as well as Blu-ray support in its RecordNow and CinePlayer HD applications.

AuthorScript is Sonic's core burning engine and is used by many software developers, including Adobe, Microsoft and Sony. The new SKDK will enable developers to add Blu-ray support to their applications. The SDK will be available for licensing in the summer.

BenQ BW1000 triple writer drive with Blu-ray support.