Pioneer Prepares to Launch Blu-ray Disc Drive

[Deepak]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20051227/tc_pcworld/124084

Pioneer plans to unveil at the International Consumer Electronics Show its first Blu-ray Disc format optical disc drive for personal computers, it said this week. The drive will go on sale in Japan at the end of January pending the completion of two licensing issues, the company says.

The BDR-101A drive is compatible with non-cartridge single-layer recordable BD-R and rewritable BD-RW discs and single and dual-layer read-only BD-ROM discs, the company says. It is also compatible with a wide range of DVD-based media and can write DVD-R and DVD-RW discs, says Pioneer.

Pioneer plans to initially offer it direct to Japanese PC makers for inclusion in their desktop computers and systems and will later expand sales to other countries, says Akira Muneto, a spokesperson for Pioneer in Tokyo. It's scheduled to be available in the U.S. during the first quarter of 2006. This schedule means that PCs on the market boasting Blu-ray Disc support could appear in the first half of 2006.

The drive will have an ATAPI interface that delivers a data transfer rate of 33MB per second, says Muneto.

 

[RavenFox]

Cool news.

 

[pcchen]

It can't read nor write CD... if true it'd be worthless for most consumers.

 

[bloodbob]

I wonder how long it will take someone to rip a blue-ray movie with it and get the drive black listed.

I also wonder if pioneer would of an exchange for black-listed drives.

 

[Guden Oden]

It can't read nor write CD... if true it'd be worthless for most consumers.

Why do you believe that? Most people have room for more than one optical drive in their PCs.

Besides, the need to write CDs is greatly diminished if one can write to a media that is >35 times greater in capacity.

 

[pcchen]

Why do you believe that? Most people have room for more than one optical drive in their PCs.

I'd rather wait for a device which can read/write CD, DVD, and Blu-ray disc.

Besides, the need to write CDs is greatly diminished if one can write to a media that is >35 times greater in capacity.

If I have to burn 300MB photos for my friend, I'd use my CD-R as it's still cheaper than a DVD-R.

 

[DudeMiester]

Is it just me, or does cartidge based disks seem like a much better idea then what we have now? No scratchs, easy to stack, no opening and closing cases, etc...

 

[Deepak]

It can't read nor write CD... if true it'd be worthless for most consumers.

The article doesn't say anything about writing BR disks, but it can write DVD-R/RW.

 

[ANova]

How much, that's what I want to know.

 

[Zod]

Is it just me, or does cartidge based disks seem like a much better idea then what we have now? No scratchs, easy to stack, no opening and closing cases, etc...

It's been tried before with DVD-RAM. I quite liked them, but the market said no. I still have one of the disks and a panasonic DVD-RAM recorder that will take it.

 

[pcchen]

The article doesn't say anything about writing BR disks, but it can write DVD-R/RW.

This press release has more information (in Japanese). It can read and write Blu-ray discs, but no CD reading/writing mentioned. A Japanese report in PC watch says it doesn't support CD reading/writing functions.

 

[Deepak]

This press release has more information (in Japanese). It can read and write Blu-ray discs, but no CD reading/writing mentioned. A Japanese report in PC watch says it doesn't support CD reading/writing functions.

That would be shocking if true, considering it would be a PC optical drive.

 

[Nappe1]

I wonder how long it will take someone to rip a blue-ray movie with it and get the drive black listed.

I also wonder if pioneer would of an exchange for black-listed drives.

sorry to pop your bubble, but blacklisting and needed Phone home features were stated not to be true in the previous Blu-Ray meeting.
I'll quote myself from MURC forums about a month ago: ( http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?p=563935&highlight=mandatory#post563935 )

hmmh.... interesting... Blu-Ray consortium is showing some cooperation with consumers and/or clearing some air about problematic stuff.

http://www.digitaltvdesignline.com/howto/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=174403090

Most interesting part to all blu-ray haters as snipped:

Shifting gears somewhat, the discussion then focused some digital rights management issues that have recently been singled out in the press by Microsoft and others. The first area touched upon was Mandatory Managed Copy (MMC). MMC is a function of AACS, which is the basic content protection system for Blu-ray Disc. Once compliance and robustness rules are received from the AACS founders group, the Blu-ray Disc Association can include MMC in the Blu-ray Disc format. These rules are expected shortly. A second DRM issue was discussed also: BD+. BD+ is an additional layer of content protection for BD-ROM titles. Reportedly, BD+ is totally transparent to the end user, and does not interfere with "untampered with" titles or players. It was pointed out that an Internet connection is NOT required for BD+ to operate or playback of any BD title. It was further noted that BD+ will not interfere with mandatory managed copy.

and those who are too lazy even read this (because it's a Sony document anyway), I'll snip the major parts once more:

1)

...Mandatory Managed Copy (MMC). MMC is a function of AACS, which is the basic content protection system for Blu-ray Disc. Once compliance and robustness rules are received from the AACS founders group, the Blu-ray Disc Association can include MMC in the Blu-ray Disc format. These rules are expected shortly...

2)

A second DRM issue was discussed also: BD+. BD+ is an additional layer of content protection for BD-ROM titles. Reportedly, BD+ is totally transparent to the end user, and does not interfere with "untampered with" titles or players.

3)

that an Internet connection is NOT required for BD+ to operate or playback of any BD title. It was further noted that BD+ will not interfere with mandatory managed copy.

There's a lot of more interesting stuff as well in same article. check it out.
and hey... come on, this Blu-ray consortium report. Not Sony report. (pretty much same companies gave us Compact Disc. It is just that philips was the drum player back then and it became Philips' format. Now it looks like blu-ray will be called Sony format, though there's whole bunch of companies doing the work. (and holding Sony back not to implement craziest ideas they can come up with. )