Pioneer’s new Blu-ray Combo drive would be sweet in a Mac
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Jan 25, 2007 at 4:34pm
Boy, I’d love to see one of these in a Mac Pro—or a next gen iMac: Pioneer has developed a BDC-202 Blu-ray Disc Combo Drive. With BD-ROM compatibility, the drive enables professionals and consumers to watch high-definition (HD) movies on personal computers.
It also includes read support for single and dual-layer Blu-ray disc formats together with read/write compatibility with a range of DVD and CD media. Awareness of the quality of HD content is growing among end-users, and it’s knowledge that’s gathering steam as the increasing numbers of high-profile movie titles are published and promoted in the Blu-ray format, according to Chris Tampsett, director, Pioneer Europe Multimedia Division. At the same time, unit costs of powerful graphics processors, high-specification sound cards and attractive flat-screen displays are falling and, in combination with Blu-ray drives, provide the option of offering an exceptional computer-based movie experience, he says.
As well as the clarity of Blu-ray HD images, the Pioneer driveenables up to 50GB of high-definition video and audio content to be stored on a single disc. The drive also supports high-speed DVD read/write (including DVD-R/RW, +R/RW and DVD-RAM) and CD read/write.
The BDC-202 will be sold to original equipment manufacturers and systems builders. It will be available in the second quarter of 2007.
What do you say, Apple? One of these in Mac, perhaps?
Check out the offerings at Mac OS Ken and The Video Sandbox, Macsimum New’s media partners.
Greg Alexander Says:
good point on HD-DVD Bob… I read “combo drive” as having both… but it’s combo BluRay+regular DVD.
Still, it’s my understanding that BluRay is more expensive than HDDVD for creating masters/new movies on disk, but for home computers the prices are similar? Is that right? If so, the extra storage would be very welcome, if only for backing up home movies.
Posted on January 25, 2007
Peter Warner Says:
The Current crop of Panasonic drives for portables leaves a lot to be desired - the sooner Apple moves on with new drives, the better.
Posted on January 25, 2007
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
Bob Says:
I’d prefer a technology that wasn’t going to be dead in a couple of years....I’d rather have a HD DVD drive myself.
Posted on January 25, 2007