As opposed to Pioneer's BDR-101A, it can playback and burn also CD's

Jun 30, 2006 09:25 GMT  ·  By

Plextor, a leading supplier of optical disc drives, has just released its first Blu-ray disc burner - PX-B900A - the industry?s second, after Pioneer?s BDR-101A, informs X-bit Labs.

?We are delighted to be launching our first Blu-ray device. Plextor has a long history in providing premium, high reliability optical drives and the new PX-B900A is no exception. This launch marks the start of a family of Plextor drives utilising Blu-ray technology,? said Rudy De Meirsman, sales & marketing manager of Plextor Europe

The Plextor PX-B900A supports both 12cm and 8cm discs, being able to playback, read, record and re-write single-layer 25GB Blu-Ray discs (at up to 2x), DVDs (8x speed for DVD+R/-R/+RW, 6x for DVD-RW, 4x for DVD+R/-R DL) and can also playback and burn CDs (24x CD-R and 16x CD-RW). The manufacturer included an 8MB buffer to ensure there is no data intermission.

The Plextor PX-B900A will be available on the retail market starting September or October at Plextor?s network of dealers. The price hasn?t been revealed up until now.

Pioneer Electronics' BDR-101A was the first PC burner to record to a Blu-ray disk, packing almost 25 GB on only one write-once disc, informs PC World.

The supported formats for the BDR-101A are single-layer 25GB BD-R, the write-once version of Blu-ray Disc, and 25GB BD-RE, BD's rewritable media. Pioneer?s drive is rated to read BD-R, BD-RE, and BD-ROM at a speed of 2X. The drive is capable of writing to single-layer DVD #00026#177; R at 8X; to dual-layer DVD-R at 2X, to double-layer DVD+R at 2.4X, and to DVD #00026#177; RW at 4X.

Read speeds are 8X for DVD-ROM and DVD #00026#177; R media, and 6X for DVD #00026#177; R DL and DVD #00026#177; RW media.

On the other hand, Pioneer Electronics' BDR-101A is not able to read or write to CDs, or to write to dual-layer 50GB BD media.