14 DAY TRIAL // The SuperSpeed USB 3.0 may be suffering from a severe handicap right now, namely the lack of native chipset support, but, even so, it still managed to propagate considerably. In fact, makers of USB 3.0 controller chips benefited from this situation a fair bit, and as motherboard makers released new platforms that made use of such solutions, other hardware makers were quite eager to provide storage units compatible with the 5Gbps data rates.
Buffalo made a more unique move than its peers, in the way that its newest electronic compatible with the SuperSpeed standard is not another flash drive or HDD. Instead, it is an external Blu-ray burner. Normally, external optical disk drives can't really operate at speeds they would reach on the SATA interface, because the USB 2.0 connection is capped at 480Mbps. With this bottleneck removed, however, Buffalo's MediaStation BR3D-12U3 has no problems when it comes to scribing disks at 12x speeds.
The device, measuring 6.3 x 2.0 x 8.7 inches, is bundled with CyberLink Blu-ray 3D Ready media Suite. This allows it to write CD-R and CD-RW disks at 40x and 24x, respectively, while BD-R SL/DL and BD-RE SL/DL reach 12x and 2x, respectively. As for DVDs, DVD-R/+R are written at up to 16x, whereas 8x is possible on DVD-R/+R DL, 6x for DVD-RW and 5x for DVD-RAM.
"Digital media continually evolves with an ever increasing focus on interaction between consumers and their content," said Ralph Spagnola, vice president of sales at Buffalo Technology. "By combining unsurpassed speeds, 3D support and video upscaling, our new MediaStation writer delivers the performance required for an unrivaled consumer Blu-ray experience at home."
Naturally, Buffalo made sure that its newest creation is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 ports, for a wider compatibility. End-users will be able to test the product themselves once it finally starts shipping in the US this month, priced at $350.