Pioneer's BDR-101A Blu-ray Burner

ExtremeTech By Loyd Case Blu-ray is here. After a longer-than-expected gestation period, Pioneer is now shipping the BDR-101A Blu-ray recorder for the PC. Before we dive into the specs and performance testing, let's take a quick look at Blu-ray, what it is, and what it's not. Blu-ray Disc is an optical storage medium with capacities of 25GB (single layer) and 50GB (double layer). The standard was jointly developed by members of the Blu-ray Disc Association, though Sony and Philips were the chief technology drivers in the organization. The Blu-ray Disc Association now consists of some 170 companies, including hardware, software and media manufacturers. Most of the recent attention on Blu-ray has been focused on the ongoing format war for high-definition movie discs that's been going on between the HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc Association. Less attention has been paid to either drive as a PC storage device, even though both sides of the format fight are planning on releasing PC drives capable of recording discs. While HD-DVD beat Blu-ray to market in the consumer player arena, with the Toshiba HD-A1, the first PC recordable drive on the market is Pioneer's BDR-101A Blu-ray recorder. read more...