It has begun! (BR drive @ $450 for end of year)

[MechanizedDeath]

KLee found this and posted it over at GAF. It kinda makes the price argument tougher to make against BR IMO.

Philips All-in-One OPU81 Blu-ray Disc Drive

We stopped by the Philips booth and were fortunate enough to speak with one of their product engineers who took us through the upcoming Blu-ray disc products. The first product slated to hit the market is the All-in-One OPU81 internal drive which is a true universal solution. The drive has 3 discrete lasers: red for DVD, Infrared for CD and blue for the Blu-ray disc. It will read and write pretty much all formats:

* Dual Layer Blu-ray disc (50GB)
* Dual-layer DVD+/-R
* 16x DVD+/-R/RW
* 40-50x CD-R/RW

This unit uses discs without cartridges, thanks to a hard coating they apply to the Blue-ray disc media. The drive will start shipping by the end of the year, with mass production taking place in early 2006. MSRP is set at around $450.

The internal PC drive will debut first primarily because Philips (and likely the entire Blu-ray disc group) wants to wait on the install base of software to be ready for a set-top box deployment. They did, however, show off a prototype set-top Blu-ray disc recorder/player unit that was playing back recorded ATSC signal on an LCD display. The new players look awesome and play off of a high-tech look that emphasizes the advances features of the new format.

It's an internal PC drive, but if MSRP is $450, then the actual street price should be just under $400. And that means it's making a profit at that price. And this is a writer. It'll not just write BR discs, but also /CDDVD-9 as well. And it'll read DVDs @ 16x. All this with three discrete lasers, which should be the cost-leader in the PS3 drive (IMO). If nothing else, this bodes well for the PS3 for a couple reasons. A hybrid laser should be cheaper, especially since I believe power requirements are lower when not writing. Also, if this first-gen drive reads DVDs @ 16x, maybe we can hope for the same read speed in the PS3. That would mean making DVD games wouldn't be a disadvantage. Thoughts?

Mods: If this is off-topic, feel free to lock, but I figure this is applicable to some of the previous cost discussions we've had. And it seems a writeable all-in-wonder drive like this costing $450 MSRP makes putting in a ROM drive in the PS3 seem less a risky proposition. PEACE.

 

[Mefisutoferesu]

Sweet Googily-Moogily!! I can almost actually afford that!!

On another point the 16x DVD speed is very encouraging. That would essentially translate into a 6x BRD, right? I'm wondering since they didn't specifically list the speed, or are the speeds not related? I always forget.

I'm surprised how early the drive is shipping though... I was expecting mid-2006.

 

[MechanizedDeath]

And here comes the retraction.

Almost surreal, but this was corrected by DM, and seems on the level. As the name would suggest, this might just be the laser assembly:

http://www.opticalstorage.philips.com/about/news/section-13542/article-14779.html

Straight from Philips, so as real as it gets. Not sure what the MSRP would refer to in this case, but if the main body of info is wrong, that MSRP is probably just as wrong. Oh well, was definitely a good story while it lasted...oh...20 minutes or so. Fact-checked by DM. Now there's something you don't see everyday. PEACE.

 

[Fafalada]

That would essentially translate into a 6x BRD, right?

Closer to 3.5 (BDRom) and I always question 16x DVD speeds being 'true' 16x given the physical limitations of the format.

Poo on you Duane for getting my hopes up for a cheap BR writer

 

[MechanizedDeath]

That would essentially translate into a 6x BRD, right?

Closer to 3.5 (BDRom) and I always question 16x DVD speeds being 'true' 16x given the physical limitations of the format.

Poo on you Duane for getting my hopes up for a cheap BR writer

LOL! Even I'm laughing at my ownage right now. DM got his fact-checking right for once. The horsemen are riding. The end is most certainly nigh. Way too overzealous on this one, which is why I tend to avoid creating threads for the most part. I don't fact-check. PEACE.

 

[Bobbler]

What is wrong about it, MechanizedDeath?

The thing from philips seems to just confirm what was taken from audioholics. The formats, etc. The only thing the philips page didn't mention was the price...?

Seems like those articles support each other rather than contradict each other.

 

[MechanizedDeath]

Bobbler: I think the name OPU81 is just for the laser assembly. I don't know why Audioholics would refer to the laser assembly in the drive name. Besides which, there doesn't seem to be any other corroborating evidence of that MSRP in relation to any Philips drive, and I haven't spotted that name referring to anything but the laser assembly. I'd like to be right if for no other reason than to have another laugh at DM. But I guess by reflex I'm gonna err on the side of caution now and assume the the name is for the OPU only, and that Audioholics might have gotten some of their info confused. Feel free to prove me wrong though. If there's really a writeable BR drive for $450 by year's end, then I'll be very happy regardless. PEACE.

 

[Bobbler]

Bobbler: I think the name OPU81 is just for the laser assembly. I don't know why Audioholics would refer to the laser assembly in the drive name. Besides which, there doesn't seem to be any other corroborating evidence of that MSRP in relation to any Philips drive, and I haven't spotted that name referring to anything but the laser assembly. I'd like to be right if for no other reason than to have another laugh at DM. But I guess by reflex I'm gonna err on the side of caution now and assume the the name is for the OPU only, and that Audioholics might have gotten some of their info confused. Feel free to prove me wrong though. If there's really a writeable BR drive for $450 by year's end, then I'll be very happy regardless. PEACE.

It looks like OPU81 is not only the name of the laser, but the drive also.

OPU66 (the laser setup that Philip's compared the OPU81 on that link you sent) is also one of philip's drives -- OPU66.20. Seems like they just attach numbers after it to create a series of them. I wouldn't be surprised to see the drive was actually OPU81.20 or something similar.

Philips might have been undecided on the name for that particular drive and just called it OPU81 at the time.

I wouldn't totally discredit them. The price may well be wrong, but the other information seems correct to me and only supported by the philips page.

 

[MechanizedDeath]

Bobbler: I think the name OPU81 is just for the laser assembly. I don't know why Audioholics would refer to the laser assembly in the drive name. Besides which, there doesn't seem to be any other corroborating evidence of that MSRP in relation to any Philips drive, and I haven't spotted that name referring to anything but the laser assembly. I'd like to be right if for no other reason than to have another laugh at DM. But I guess by reflex I'm gonna err on the side of caution now and assume the the name is for the OPU only, and that Audioholics might have gotten some of their info confused. Feel free to prove me wrong though. If there's really a writeable BR drive for $450 by year's end, then I'll be very happy regardless. PEACE.

It looks like OPU81 is not only the name of the laser, but the drive also.

OPU66 (the laser setup that Philip's compared the OPU81 on that link you sent) is also one of philip's drives -- OPU66.20. Seems like they just attach numbers after it to create a series of them. I wouldn't be surprised to see the drive was actually OPU81.20 or something similar.

Philips might have been undecided on the name for that particular drive and just called it OPU81 at the time.

I wouldn't totally discredit them. The price may well be wrong, but the other information seems correct to me and only supported by the philips page.

Ah, I guess I'll keep hope alive then. It would be very nice if true. The lower the initial price, the better. PEACE.

 

[Ty]

The internal PC drive will debut first primarily because Philips (and likely the entire Blu-ray disc group) wants to wait on the install base of software to be ready for a set-top box deployment.

And this illustrates that they too believe that step-top boxes (home electronic versions) need content, not success in the PC sector, to drive adoption into the living room.

 

[ANova]

I'm not too particularly thrilled about blu-ray or HD-DVD at this point. Why? Read up on DRM, HDCP, Palladium, PVP-OPM, East Fork, the list goes on. All of which both formats will support. But that's going off topic, maybe for another thread.

Bobbler - Is the heat getting to ya?

 

[jvd]

eh my choice comes down to the actual media cost . How much are the blank discs ?