4x Blu-ray Rewriter Introduced by Pioneer
If you were interested in writing files to expensive Blu-ray Discs, Pioneer has the answer for you. The BDR-202 internal Blu-ray Disc/DVD/CD writer for PC was just introduced in Europe and will make its way to the States soon. Connecting to your PC via SATA 1.0A, the – ahem – industry pioneering drive can read BD-ROM discs, read and write single layer BD-R/BD-RE discs, read DVD-ROM, and read/write to DVD-R/+R, DVD-RW/+RW, DVD-R/+R (double-layer), and CD-R/RW media. It’s a veritable jack-of-all-trades!
While the competing format, HD DVD, is still only offering 1x writable drives, and doesn’t offer anything for rewriting yet, Pioneer’s new burner will write on BD-R at up to 4x speed, and will also rewrite on BD-RE at up to 2x speed. This a significant short-coming for HD DVD, and many people are sure hoping HD DVD will be able to catch up soon – especially with Toshiba claiming all their laptops next year will have HD DVD drives. The speeds of DVD and CD writing on the BDR-202 will be up to 6x for DVD-/+RW, up to 12x for DVD-/+R, and up to 24x for CD-R/RW. Pioneer say the drive’s limited equalizer LSI and a liquid crystal tilt compensator will help with playback of discs. “Ultra DRA” technology is also said to reduce vibrations while burning to a disc.
Currently on sale in Europe for $675 (converted from Euros), the BDR-202 will reach our shores at about $650. Currently write-once BD media is around $15 per disc for 25GB, and rewritable media approaches $25 for 25GB. For extra storage, 50GB media comes in at $45 for -R and $70 for -RE.
This is a significant achievement for Pioneer and the Blu-ray format. However, LG offers a “multi-blue” PC drive that reads both HD DVD and Blu-ray and writes to Blu-ray, DVD and CD which might tickle your fancy a bit more.
Just something to point out about your comment below:
“For extra storage, 50GB media comes in at $45 for -R and $70 for -RE.”
This may be true – but the 202 is a single-layer-write only drive – not DL writability as yet.
It DOES read dual layer(obviously), but pioneer seem to want to get single layer writing sorted out properly before moving on to dual layer, Pioneer being conservative as always.
I should have one of these babies in my hands hopefully next week, for testing, along with the BDC-S02 Combo drive… Will be fun 🙂
Nice, thanks Caelum! I’ll have to check out your results with these drives.
First impression of the drives is really good…
build quality is simply fantastic, a real top notch drive mechanism…
burn quality to DVD’s is pretty much the best i’ve seen. ever.
yeah, only 12x burning… but very nice quality… i know i’d rather quality over speed 🙂
as far as the video goes, well, 1080p vids are sweet as… quality is stunning!
more detailed review will no doubt be released later – when i can fully test the drives out 🙂
Hey Caelum, thanks for sharing your thoughts on the drive. Be sure to let me know if you post a more comprehensive review somewhere.