Pioneer Brings Blu-ray Drive to Market

The new BDR-101A, one of the first Blu-ray drives out of the chute, will be available in the first quarter of next year.

Pioneer Electronics today announced the pending availability of one of the industry’s first Blu-ray Disc computer drives. The new Pioneer BDR-101A internal writer is expected to be available in the first quarter of 2006.

The BDR-101A utilizes shorter wavelength blue lasers to store up to 25GB of information on a single layer Blu-ray Disc. This first generation product, Pioneer said, is targeted mainly towards professionals and early adopters. The half height writer will read BD-ROM/R/RE, DVD-ROM/DVD-R/DVD-RW and +R/+RW discs and can write BD-R/RE at 2x, DVD-R/+R at 8x and DVD-RW/+RW at 4x.

“Storage capacity in a stable medium is critical,” said Andy Parsons, senior vice president at Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. “A few years ago, no one could imagine needing more storage than available on a CD-R. Yet today, we need multiple DVDs just to back up the numerous photo and video files on our computers. Blu-ray Disc technology fulfills the rapidly growing need for more storage space and Pioneer is proud to be one of the first companies bringing it to market.”