Panasonic samples extra-thin Blu-Ray burner
updated 08:20 am EST, Thu December 27, 2007
Panasonic 9.5mm Blu-Ray
Panasonic has revealed today that it has begun shipping samples of the world's thinnest Blu-ray drive. Advanced optics let the Japanese electronics firm reduce the drive height from 12.7mm (half an inch) to just 9.5mm (0.37 inches) tall; the slim profile allows it to fit in thin-and-light notebooks which have previously been locked out of the HD disc format, Panasonic notes. The drive is nonetheless fully capable and will write BD-R or BD-RE (rewritable) discs at 2X while also supporting dual-layer, 50GB discs and upcoming low-cost, organic dye discs.
The slim Blu-Ray burner also sports full legacy burning support and writes a single-layer DVD at 8X, similar to dedicated drives. Notebook manufacturers have access to the drives as of today; mass production is expected early next year and should result in finished systems in a similar timeframe. The drive will be exhibited at CES in January, though whether the tray-loading model will be accompanied by a slot-load drive is unknown. [via Impress]
It's close
12/27, 09:19am reply
If they got rid of that drive door and made it totally internal, it looks to be the right dimensions for a PowerBook or MacBookPro. Soon we'll see how vested Apple is in the HD wars, if they even are at all anymore.
danviento
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Dec 2005
Bluray 2.0?
12/27, 10:05am reply
Presumably as it's not a dedicated Bluray player, the level of Bluray support is determined by the host computer. How ironic that the best Bluray players will be PCs or Macs, and those are the platforms most ph33r3d by the studios.
OtisWild
Junior Member
Joined: Feb 2005
BDs are great
12/27, 12:31pm reply
We have a lot of data to archive and we use Dual Layer BDs to do it. I can't tell you how nice it is to put 46GB of data on one disk. It has really made archiving much easier.
The only issue we have is the lack of readers in all our other systems. We aren't going to pay the exorbitant cost to read them from all our systems, so we are limited as to where we can read them.
I'm looking forward to when we have Blu-Rays in all our systems.
Deal
Mac Enthusiast
Joined: Apr 2001