On that store, I found this by chance. (Because the two servers I run are offline now, I have to use this now.)

http://www.shop.akibaoo.co.jp/akibaoo/index.html

1,713 Yen which was about US$15 a little while ago for Hitachi-Maxell 23GB Blu-ray in cartridge.



It'll be soon under US$10.

Without cartridge vs. with cartridge
8.5GB vs. 23GB
2.4x 3.3MB/s vs. at least 9MB/s to 36MB/s

As for recorders, they are coming at non-Sony prices, too. Don't blame manufacturers for pricing those Sony and Matsushita Blu-ray recorders so high because it's mostly the consumers that set the prices in these rapidly accelerating markets.

Blu-ray disc close to DVD+R DL pricing!

Blu-ray media (without pricing): http://www.blu-ray.com/media/
Blu-ray recorders: http://www.blu-ray.com/recorders/

Nice but does BR disc burner will burn dvd r and cdr ?
What about the cost of BD in cartbridge ? (Long time ago I have seen dvd-r in cartbridge)

Are those actually Blu-Ray burners out already?

If they can't burn DVD blanks and CD blanks, who would call them successors of DVD and CD in the first place? The only decisive reason most PC people use DVD instead of ZIP, Jazz, MO, and many other standards is backward compatibility.



I linked that image to make it apparent that they are in cartridriges. I haven't seen a Blu-ray media that is not cartridge-wrapped in the factory.

Blu-ray standalone recorders were announced years ago. CDFreaks published a major Blu-ray article in about June, 2002 (which wasn't exactly right after Blu-ray became public knowledge and attention.) First consumer products started appearing in Tokyo in about two years ago. First PC drives from Sony this year.

PC drives using standard Blu-ray specification will take a little more time. Demand is very rare and who would want to make PC drives that cost more than some high-end desktop PCs if there's few demand among those that manufacture optical drives by the hundreds of millions (like LG and Samsung) to millions (like very small ones.)

But when they DO start mass production of Blu-ray PC drives, they'll first become available at Dell, HP, and other such vendors. No more years of waiting.