Pioneer offers up 4X Blu-Ray burner
updated 03:40 pm EDT, Fri August 3, 2007
Pioneer BDR-202 BD Burner
Pioneer today revealed details of the BDR-202, the new leader in the company's Blu-Ray PC drives. The full-height burner creates write-once Blu-Ray discs at 4X and supports 2X burning for rewritable discs. It also packs extra measures for stable reads and writes for the new format, Pioneer says. Ultra DRA cancels out drive shaking during the recording process and is equaled by corrections to the laser beam itself and a liquid equalizer during playback. Legacy support writes DVDs up to 12X and CDs at 24X.
The retail kit for the BDR-202 bundles CyberLink BD to encourage both playing and authoring Blu-Ray discs. Pioneer says the drive is already in European shops today, where it retails for the equivalent of $675. The US version should be available soon and will carry an official price of $650, though online stores may carry the reader for less.
