Sony BWU-100A: Sony to soon launch Blu-ray Disc drive for computers

Sony BWU-100A: Sony to soon launch Blu-ray Disc drive for computers

Developers of the Blu-Ray technology Sony have confirmed that they would launch after-market Blu-ray Disc drive next month.

These drives would be installable on existing desktop computers. The drive model would be Sony BWU-100A and it would support burning to single and dual-layer BD-R (single use) or BD-RE (rewriteable) discs.

Sony claims that the discs written through this drive can store up to 25GB of data or about 2 hours of high-definition video. A dual-layer disc would store twice as much data on it.

The company would ship this Blu-Ray drive with CyberLink’s CyberLink BD Solution burning software. The drive would have the write speed of 2x and would take around 50 minutes to burn a 25 Gig single layer disc. Whoa!

And since it is a multi-format supporting drive, it would also support the following standards: 4.7GB DVD+/-R/+/-RW/RAM discs, 8.5GB DVD+R Double/Dual Layer Discs and CDs.

The company has said that consumers would require at least a Pentium III 800MHz or faster processor for data burning and for real time video authoring and editing, a Pentium IV 1.6GHz or faster is recommended. They are planning to sell this drive for US$750 in North America.