December 28th 2005

Blu-Ray To Take First Tentative Steps To Market

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Pioneer is to use the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January to launch a Blu-Ray drive for PCs.

The green light for launch is still depending on a resolution of a few licensing issues, but if these are fixed the BDR-101A drive will go on sale in Japan at the end of the month.

Initially the drive will only be made available to PC manufacturers for inclusion in pre-built systems. The current plan is to make the drive available to OEMs in the USA before the end of the first quarter.

The Pioneer drive will be able to write and read single-layer BD-R (Blu-ray Disc Recordable) and BD-RE (Blu-ray Disc Rewritable) discs without a cartridge, and read single-layer and double-layer ROM (Read-Only Memory) discs without a cartridge. This means you will be able to store up to 25 GB of information on a single disc writen by the Pioneer drive.

There is no pricing information yet - expect that at CES - but sources indicate that even $500 may be enough to let you pick up a BDR-101A.