14 DAY TRIAL // Blu-ray players or burners are still considered a high-performance upgrade to today's computer systems, as most consumer PCs continue to be featured with the traditional CD/DVD combo optical drives. However, technology is advancing at a fast pace and Blu-ray solutions will slowly take over the market as the standard optical drive solution for mainstream PCs.
By that time, companies such as Pioneer will be ready to provide for their customers a high-performance Blu-ray burner that could possibly be more affordable than current solutions. On that note, Pioneer, a company that was directly involved in the development of Blu-ray technology, has just announced its latest 8x BD Burner, which will be released in Japan in January, with worldwide availability to follow.
The company has enabled several technologies on its latest Blu-ray product, including Disc-Resonance Stabiliser, PowerRead and PureRead functions. In addition, the new BDR-S03J has been designed within a dustproof structure that keeps dust away from the product's internal components. The afore-mentioned Disc-Resonance Stabiliser technology is meant to control the airflow generated by disc rotation, in order to minimize disc warping. This technology is also good for lowering the noise the drive generates when in operating mode.
As far as technical specifications go, the new Blu-ray burner from Pioneer has the ability to write at 8x speed on BD-R single layer media, as well as on BD-R double layer media. With DVD-R/+R media, the just announced optical drive from Pioneer is capable of 16x write speeds, while double layer media can be burned at 8x speed. Other specifications include a built-in 4MB of cache memory and support for Microsoft's Windows XP and Windows OS.
Unfortunately, the company decided to make available its new BDR-S03J optical drive in Japan initially, where the product is slated for a January release. The BDR-S03J is expected to come with a price tag of 38,000 Yen, or approximately $400.