Philips Demonstrates its Blu-ray Disc PC drive capable of reading and writing on CD, DVD and Blu-ray Discs
Monday, January 03, 2005




Philips Electronics, a world leader in optical storage and a founding member of the Blu-ray Disc Association, will be revealing its prototype all-in-one PC writer that reads and writes CD, DVD and Blu-ray Discs. The demonstration will be held on the Philips booth #9004 at the CES 2005 exhibition. The introduction of this unique all-in-one PC writer is scheduled for the second half of 2005.



The PC drive utilizes Philips' latest compact OPU81 triple-laser optical pick-up unit in which separate infra-red, red and blue lasers share the same optical pathway to provide Blu-ray Disc read/write capabilities as well as read/write compatibility with DVD and CD. This compact optical pick-up unit is based on a flexible architecture, allowing future speed improvements to be easily and cost-effectively implemented.



"With the introduction of this new product concept we have created the ultimate consumer product" said Cor Saris , CEO of Philips Optical Storage. " Combining the success of CD and DVD Recording with the BluRay Recording formats into one PC writer will accelerate the acceptance of this new format in the PC and Consumer market."



Blu-ray Disc is the most advanced new optical storage standard that will satisfy all next-generation requirements in terms of storage capacity, data speeds, copy protection, interactivity, convenience and cost. As consumers worldwide gain access to high-definition TV (HDTV) through cable, satellite and terrestrial channels, they are not going to be satisfied with less than equal quality in their video recordings. Blu-ray Disc is the only format with the capacity of 25 Gbytes on a single-layer disc and 50 Gbytes on a dual layer disc, to offer full-length feature movie playback using high-definition MPEG2 encoding - the native compression technique for HDTV broadcasts - or even more with advanced codecs, like AVC. In addition, for pre-recorded packaged media, Blu-ray Disc has sufficient capacity to include bonus materials and interactive sessions for an unparalleled entertainment experience. For PC users archiving photographs or video and other data on the hard disk, Blu-ray Disc is the only recordable/re-writable format that provides such a quantum leap in optical storage capacity and gives a seamless experience between PC and CE environments.


Source: Philips Optical Storage

I will buy one if I can have one for US$450 now and if I can burn at 4x, not 2x.

I think the first price will be around $1000 - $1500 .................. I don't mind the 2x, just gonna read a book or something.

Is the case included? (nice case)

lol, i believe that's a whole PC. looks like a CoolerMaster WaveMaster case. i think the single Opti drive is the drive itself....

edit: you figured it out and edited before i could post...but i'm leaving my post as is

Correct.

The PC is probably an HP.

I dont have more than $150 to spend on one

Get one now, pay later.

No scholarship?

Hm... to be serious, I didn't have US$0.1 most times when I was at your age. US$0.04 was a serious money in my pockets.

That sounds like old man talk

70 years ago, it was not that bad in Korea. It's not an old man's talk, but something more complicated.

Not yet. I first owned a DVD player before a burner and how much a BluRay/HDDVD player could be? $400-1000? That's a lot of SL or DL media to burn my data.