Pioneer Intros Its First Blu-Ray Writer for PCs with 8X Speed

Pioneer Europe has unveiled today its latest Blu-ray writer designed for personal computer systems and built to provide PC users with a speed of 8X for single-layer and dual-layer BD-R discs. As expected, the new drive comes in a combo package as it offers writing and reading support for other media types, such as the traditional DVD and CD formats. The new PC optical drive has been designed to enable more PC users to take advantage of the performance specifications and storage capacity delivered by the Blu-ray disc format.

“Now Blu-ray is cemented as the next generation storage and media distribution format, sales of Blu-ray content and devices have been strong on the back of greater consumer confidence in the technology,” Says Brendan Sheridan, product manager, Pioneer Europe NV, Multimedia Division. “The availability of products such as the BDR-203BK with great flexibility in terms of disc compatibility, extensive DL capacities and faster writing speeds adds to the growing momentum behind Blu-ray.”

The new BDR-203BK Blu-ray drive from Pioneer is capable of providing its users with a 2X write speed for BD-RE (single-layer and dual-layer) discs, 16X write speed for DVD-R/+R, 8X write speed for DVD_R DL/+R DL and 32X write speed for CD-R media. The Pioneer drive also comes featured with some of the company's proprietary technologies, including Ultra DRA, Limited Equalizer LSI and Multi-Effect Liquid Crystal Tilt Compensator. All of these are meant to provide a better support for writing and reading the latest optical media formats.

With the announcement, Pioneer also said that the new drive would become available on an OEM basis starting February 2009, featuring a black bezel. Price wise, the new Blu-ray writer for PCs will be available for prices in the range of €250.