14 DAY TRIAL // It must be tough for Pioneer to lose the world's first title for its new BDR-206MBK Blu-ray XL burner, but the Japanese manufacturer has to let this one go, since Buffalo has managed to best them just by a few hours, although that certainly doesn't make their drive any less impressive since they both share similar specs.
When I talk about similar specs, I am actually referring to writing speeds since both drives are able to burn BDXL discs at 4X, BD-RE XL discs at 2X, and conventional single and double layer BD-R discs at 6X.
Although I wouldn't call these writing speeds blazing fast by any means (I am actually quite sure that burning a BDXL drive will actually prove to be quite a chore), the impressive storage capacity available from such a optical disc will surely prove to be an incentive for quite a lot of users since BDXL discs can go up to 128GB in size.
As it's the case with the Buffalo's internal BDXL drive, this does also come with a SATA interface and a rather small 4MB buffer memory.
Apart from Blu-ray and DVD discs users can also burn CD-R/RW (at 24x) and watch Blu-ray 3D movies, Pioneer's drive coming with a 3D enabled player in the form of CyberLink's PowerDVD 10.
Speaking of bundled programs, Pioneer actually sales this with quite an impressive software list, CyberLink's PowerProducer 5, Power2Go 7, InstantBurn 5, PowerBackup 2, Medi@Show 5 and LabelPrint 2 all being shipped together with this unit.
Unfortunately, Pioneer hasn't provided us with an official price for the BDR-206MBK Blu-ray XL burner, although, unlike Buffalo, the company did state when their new drive will be available for purchase, the BDR-206MBK coming to a retailer near you sometime in mid-November, so there isn't that much time left if you are determined to grab one of these. (via akihabaranews)