Pioneer offers 5X Blu-Ray combo PC drive
updated 04:05 pm EDT, Tue July 24, 2007
Pioneer 5X Blu-Ray Combo
Pioneer on Tuesday added to its still young Blu-Ray drive lineup and released the BDC-S02, its fastest ever Blu-Ray combo model for desktops. The 3.5-inch drive reads single-layer, 25GB discs as quickly as 5X, besting the 4X of most competitors. Dual-layer Blu-Ray titles can be read at 2X. The Japanese drive maker saves costs by dropping Blu-Ray recording but offers DVD writing closer to desktop drives with 4X dual-layer DVD+/-RW and 12X single-layer discs. Cache is doubled compared to most drives at 4MB and guards against virtually any disc burning errors.
Black and white versions ship to match different PC cases. Each plugs into a desktop's SATA port and requires a CPU equal to an 800MHz Pentium III for basic burning tasks. As each drive includes no HD decoder, playing Blu-Ray videos requires at least a Core Duo as well as a fast video card capable of processing 1080p video, such as AMD's Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA's GeForce 7600 GT and newer chipsets. [via BDC-S02]
