macnn/electronista
12/27/2007, 8:20am, EST
Thursday, December 27thPanasonic samples extra-thin Blu-Ray burner
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]

Filed under: upgrades/storage
Other story tags: blu-ray, Panasonic
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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.