Sony Optiarc America Rolls Out Slim External Blu-ray Disc Rewritable Drive

[btarunr]

Sony Optiarc America today announced its first slim, portable and external Blu-ray Disc (BD) rewritable drive to compliment notebooks, netbooks or desktop PCs. The new BDX-S500U model writes single BD-R media at up to 6X and dual layer BD-R media at up to 4X speeds, recording a full 25GB disc in about 20 minutes. The 6X recording speed is achieved using 6X compatible BD-R media, and one 25GB Sony BD-R blank disc comes included in the retail box. Also included with the drive is CyberLink's Media Suite 8 for capturing, authoring, editing, backing up, viewing high-definition personal content and playing back Blu-ray Disc movies including 3D Blu-ray movies.



The portable drive offers quick and easy connectivity with a high speed USB (USB 2.0) digital interface for simple setup and maximum flexibility. It can be shared between computers for personal video, data, music or image backup, making it an excellent replacement drive for a standard DVD drive while offering all the benefits of Blu-ray Disc technology, including 3D Blu-ray high-definition playback capabilities.

The BDX-S500U drive can record up to 50GB of data for random access storage and backup on BD-R (write once) or BD-RE (rewritable) discs, or up to 220 minutes of high-definition 24M bps MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video on a BD-R/RE 50GB disc.

The drive also records standard 4.7GB DVD+/-R discs at up to 8X speeds, 8.5GB DVD+/-R Double/Dual layer at up to 4X, DVD+RW at up to 8X, DVD-RW at up to 6X, CD-R at up to 24X, CD-RW at up to 16X, and supports DVD-RAM recording at up to 5X speeds.

Availability
The BDX-S500U drive will be available through authorized distributors, resellers and select online sites starting this month.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[RejZoR]

To be honest i don't see much point in optical drives anymore. The only time i've burned one was when i was installing WinXP to a friends computer. Otherwise i haven't burned a single dics for years. DVD that is, no BD. I just use USB flash drives and WD My Passport drives to do the heavy transport. It's just more practical and faster. I mean, you can add and remove files as you wish, opposed to optical media which has to be entirely erased.

 

[Tartaros]

Also the prices for bd are still expensive. And knowing sony this thing will be even more expensive.

 

[inferKNOX]

LOLOL!
I, in my part of the world, have never even physically seen a BD (other than PS3 games) yet!:shadedshu

 

[FreedomEclipse]

To be honest i don't see much point in optical drives anymore. The only time i've burned one was when i was installing WinXP to a friends computer. Otherwise i haven't burned a single dics for years. DVD that is, no BD. I just use USB flash drives and WD My Passport drives to do the heavy transport. It's just more practical and faster. I mean, you can add and remove files as you wish, opposed to optical media which has to be entirely erased.

not to mention the fact that writable blu-ray discs will cost a small fortune. I still dont like the Pricing of dual layer DVDs £15-20 can get me 50 or 100 blank DVDs £20 will only get me something like 5DL discs. average price for one disc is around £2-3+

I could see a HTPC making use of this though - you can store over hundreds of movies n music on just 1 disc. but im more likely to just add in a NAS or centralised server which hosts all my music n videos and stream it via wi-fi or hardwired connection.

 

[DigitalUK]

convert the bd disc to bd5 or 9 quality is superb

 

[claylomax]

LOLOL!
I, in my part of the world, have never even physically seen a BD (other than PS3 games) yet!:shadedshu

Same here.

 

[Wile E]

not to mention the fact that writable blu-ray discs will cost a small fortune. I still dont like the Pricing of dual layer DVDs £15-20 can get me 50 or 100 blank DVDs £20 will only get me something like 5DL discs. average price for one disc is around £2-3+

I could see a HTPC making use of this though - you can store over hundreds of movies n music on just 1 disc. but im more likely to just add in a NAS or centralised server which hosts all my music n videos and stream it via wi-fi or hardwired connection.

BD single layers are cheaper per GB than dual layer DVD.

convert the bd disc to bd5 or 9 quality is superb

For 1080P, I STRONGLY disagree. 720P is ok in 9GB AVCHD, but not 4.7GB AVCHD. And 1080p looks like crap in either format on all but the poorly encoded, or visually simple Blu Rays. Entirely too much detail lost.

Not to mention, to get the best picture quality, you lose the HD audio.

 

[DigitalUK]

depends how they have been encoded . if you change the audio from DTS to ac3 then encode with ripbot with a 2 pass and movie is under 1h40min for 1080p the results are amazing. also avchd is not as good quality as BD5-9

 

[Wile E]

depends how they have been encoded . if you change the audio from DTS to ac3 then encode with ripbot with a 2 pass and movie is under 1h40min for 1080p the results are amazing. also avchd is not as good quality as BD5-9

AVCHD discs are BD5 and 9. They use the same exact standards as BD. It's just 2 different names for the same thing.

And going from HD audio to plain old AC3 is just as bad as over compressing the picture. It results in an unacceptable loss in quality and detail, except now on the audio side. Half the reason I went BD is for the higher quality audio.

With some exceptions, that include upscaled master material (usually older TV shows or anime), low detail master material(also usually older shows and anime), or poorly done studio encoding(lots of these out there. Way of War comes to mind immediately. Way too much artificial film grain), no BD looks and sounds nearly as nice compressed down to 9GB or less for 1080p. It results in a significant loss of detail. 720p is a much better way to go if you insist on squeezing a BD down to a DVD. You retain a ton more detail.

People are fooled, only because most of the time they haven't seen the original source, and it does still look much better than DVD. It retains it's sharpness at high resolution, which does make it look pretty good, but if you compare it to the original, you'll see that a bunch of detail is gone.

 

[wahdangun]

i'am with Wile E, its totally different experience(glad i buy PS3 instead of X-box),

@ inferKNOX : where are you live ? its plenty BD movie in here even on small store that usually sell dvd film. and gradually the price is down now, you can buy BD movie around $15

 

[Frick]

i'am with Wile E, its totally different experience(glad i buy PS3 instead of X-box),

@ inferKNOX : where are you live ? its plenty BD movie in here even on small store that usually sell dvd film. and gradually the price is down now, you can buy BD movie around $15

South africa.

 

[DigitalUK]

most people dont have super expensive dts systems, and most blu ray discs carry ac3 audio anyway, i have seen the original source of most of the films ive done to bd5 and 9. i do use a rough guide of no more that 1h40min on a bd disc at 1080p then its best to do 720p. ive seen alot of mts files on the web and some are terrible it depends on how it was re-encoded in the first place. obviously im not saying theres no difference between a blu ray disc and bd5-9 that would be stupid but for the end result and cost they are superb.

 

[Wile E]

It doesn't take a super expensive system to hear the difference between AC3 and HD audio formats. I have $1000 invested in my setup for the receiver and speakers. That's very tame by home theater standards.

And for me, 15 blank single layer BD's of good quality cost $20, and 20 DL DVDs of good quality cost the same. The single layer BD's result in less coasters, so the price difference is negligible.

This is especially true when you consider that for:

BD 15*25GB=375GB or 18.75GB per $1 or 5 1/3 cents per GB
DL DVD 20*8.5=170GB or 8.5GB per $1 or 11.7 cents per GB

DL DVD is actually over 2x more expensive per GB than single layer BD.

I will say, however, DL BD is absolutely useless for movies. You can't see or hear a difference. it's just excessive bitrate at that point, unless you have a 4 hour long movie.

 

[DigitalUK]

in the uk BD-R is really expensive cheapest i could find is £3 each (approx $4.70) (not best quality blanks) blank dvd5 cost 10p (14 cents i think) approx each DL work out about double.

 

[Wile E]

I would never, EVER put 1080p content on a single layer dvd. That's just way too much compression. 720p might be passable, however, but still not up to my standards.