Lorin Thwaits

Pioneer will announce the MSRP of their new BDR-101A drive tomorrow, which is able to record Blu-ray discs.  It is widely expected that it will be $500 (edit: my source was wrong; it actually ended up being $995).

So after you buy the drive, then what?  That's where things get a bit more spendy.  You can get 23 gig rewritable media here for $42 each.  But I want to know how it's at all different from the very similar XDCAM Professional disc (pictured above on the right), which sells for ten bucks less?  Hopefully they're interchangeable.

Other interesting tidbits for those looking to upgrade their DVD collection

• Today at the CES show a list of 20 blu-ray movie titles that will use the single-layer 25 gig version of the disc was disclosed.  In the summer more titles will be available with additional extra features, created with the two-layer 50 gig version of the disc.  Many of these films will also include whiz-bang Java applications like little games and such.  Pretty neat!
• A read-only drive capable of playing back high definition movies will be included in each PlayStation 3  (much to the shagrin of Toshiba, NEC, and everyone else in the competing HD-DVD camp!)
• For cost-savings, Blu-ray discs being mass-produced can use a very precise printing process to create a very simple 50% paper / 50% plastic disc offering 25 gigs of storage.
• You don't have to use them in a cartridge because TDK has been busy perfecting a highly scratch-resistant finish specifically for Blu-ray discs.  They've been sampling their single layer (25 gig) and dual layer (50 gig) discs to manufacturers.
• 6 months ago TDK created a few samples of a 4-layer 100 gig disc that is expected to enter mass-production in 2007.
• A year ago Sony had done some testing of discs with up to 8 layers, offering 200 gigs of storage.  So there's lots of future growing room in this format.

I must say that it's nice to see one of the last pieces in the high definition puzzle coming together.  Farewell, NTSC and PAL!

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