Does anyone know if the maximum writing speed for BluRay will be 4X?

Suggest you look up the data rates for BD. Many people won't have hard drives capable of even 2x.

So you mean to tell me that not even an ATA-133 hard disk drive would be enough to handle 2X Blu-ray recording?

According to Blu-ray.com, it should be possible to achieve up to 12x at the outer edge of a Blu-ray disc, assuming the disc can support a maximum rotational speed of 10,000rpm and equipment with a fast enough data transfer is available. Also, the site mentions that the Blu-ray Disc Association has plans to bring Blu-ray up to 8x or more in the time to come.

A Blu-ray speed of 1x works out at 36Mbps, which is 4.5MB/sec. This means that a hard drive will need to sustain a throughput of 9MB/sec to write a Blu-ray disc at 2x. As 1x DVD is 11.08Mbps, 16x DVD works out at ~177Mbps or ~22MB / sec, which means that if a PC is capable at sustaining a steady flow of data to a DVD writing at 16x (outer edge), then in theory, it can sustain a steady flow of data to a Blu-ray writing at up to 4x, assuming a 4x Blu-ray drive is made available.

Ah, I was confused by some reports of Mb/sec vs MB/sec. It escapes me why any hardware maker would report Mb/sec instead of MB/sec. So BD is not as fast as I thought. I question how well they will work at 4x - 8x BD speeds given the extremely close tolerances between disc and laser, and the data density itself. I'm talking about burning, not ROM speeds. There'll need to be some major advances in dyes and disc technology. I forsee a lot of expensive coasters.

I think Blu-Ray writing will stay at 1x and 2x for a while. After all it's quality that people want, not recording 50Gb in 10sec.

Maby it will go up to 4x but for now I think we will have to wait to 2007 or later for faster speeds. Remember how long cd recording stayed at 1x 2x and 4x.

They must allso develop the technology etc. And that costs money.

I am happy that 1x Blu-Ray writing is fast enough compared to the amount of data you can stor (25gb on one layer).

But HD-DVD is nice too. I think HD-DVD will be a lot cheaper in the start.

For me PRICE is the object, I only use media to store raw data. Format don't matter to me. Space and price of the media

users with fast broadband like verizon fios 15/2, 30/5, 5/2 would make sense using blue-ray or hd-dvd technology. dialup = cd, broadband = dvd. highspeed broadband = blueray,hddvd.

What sense?

Well anyway, the main focus now is.

Blu-ray or Hd-DVD

Release date?
Price?
Media Price?
Quality?
Speed?

And so on, way to much discussion about assorted hardware stuff around blu-ray and HD-DVD, the facts are we don't know a lot about the technology and the companys that are developing them will release the products regardless of what consumers think.

The only real thing consumers will do is pick the technology they want as in the "VHS vs. Betamax".

Even though Betamax was a bette technology (maby don't know the technical stuff about it) VHS still won. Becaus consumers wanted it.

Blu-ray

Release Date- May 2006 - Pioneer BDR-101A
Price - $995.00 US
Blank Media Price - $50.00 US
Quality? - Yet to be answered
Speed - 2x

Interesting, where did you get this information?

It's not correct overall, the drive will be probably a follow-up named BDR-102A (?), because the 101A is released this month.

Release Date - Pioneer BDR-101A Expected to start shipping at the end of January, 2006.

Price - $995.00 US
Blank Media Price - $50.00 US
Quality? - Yet to be answered
Speed - 2x

The release data has now been corrected.