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The First Blu-ray Burner, Pioneer's BDR-101A

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thu Jun 22, 2006 07:36 PM
from the just-getting-started dept.
Data Storage Media Hardware
mikemuch writes "ExtremeTech has a review of Pioneer's BDR-101A-- the first Blu-ray burner available. The drive can do anything with CDs, is kind of slow with DVDs, and doesn't support double-density Blu-ray media, but hey, it's a start, and can burn 25GB in 42 minutes. Check out its burn speed benchmark performance at the link above."
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The First Blu-ray Burner, Pioneer's BDR-101A 50 Comments More /

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  • Learn to read! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2006, @07:40PM (#15586395)
    > The drive can do anything with CDs

    should read:
    The drive can't do anything with CDs

  • Fatal Error (Score:5, Funny)

    by linvir (970218) * on Thursday June 22 2006, @07:40PM (#15586396)
    Copyrighted media detected. Burn aborted.

    • Re:Fatal Error (Score:5, Funny)

      by Telvin_3d (855514) on Thursday June 22 2006, @08:29PM (#15586649)
      Copyrighted media detected. Burn aborted. Your TCM chip has notified the autorities. The *AA lawyers should be ringing your doorbell in 5..4..3..2..1..**DING-DONG**

  • Wow (Score:3, Funny)

    by quicks0rt (983047) on Thursday June 22 2006, @07:41PM (#15586401)
    42 minutes... Oy!

    • Re:Wow (Score:3, Informative)

      by morcheeba (260908) *
      That's about the data rate of a 7X DVD burner. Or a 73X CD burner.
    • I was really confused when I saw that fact.

      The printer friendly version doesn't have pictures and leaves out the most relevant piece of information
      As you can see from the chart generated by Nero's DVD-Speed utility, we suceessfully created a BD-E data disc. It took about 42 minutes to completely fill up the 25GB disc.

    • Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)

      by CastrTroy (595695)
      I remember when we were all using 1x burners and we liked it. For the number of times you're going to have to back up 25 Gigs, this should be sufficient. If you want something faster, then back up to tape or hard disk or something.

      • Re:Wow (Score:3, Informative)

        by Aceticon (140883)
        How about this:
        - Don't buy the Blu-Ray burner. Save $1000
        - Use the $1000 to buy 10x 250GB external HDs. This is equivalent to 40x Blu-Ray disks

        If you expect to burn more that 40 Blu-Ray disks AND expect the price per GB of Blu-Ray media to go below that for HDs (keep in mind that the price per-GB of HD media is going down fast), then go ahead and get the burner.

        By the way: Reading and writting data to an from and external HD, even via USB is actually much faster than to and from a Blu-Ray disk. Still, if th

        • Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)

          by FatherOfONe (515801)
          Yeah and it sure will be fun handing people hard drives out to see home video.

          While I do agree that it makes sense to have some "near line" backup solution, it is by no means a replacement for tapes and CD/DVD/Blu-Ray. Remember this is first gen, heck it is first. DVD burners cost $2,000 when they were released. Having said that, it would be very nice to backup all my pictures to one of these babies as opposed to the current 3 DVD's it takes now.

          Now having said that, I also agree that for me it isn't wor

        • Re:Wow (Score:3, Informative)

          by CastrTroy (595695)
          Well, the 1x burners took 74 minutes to write a disc, which is 8.8 Megs a minute. Which is .146 Megs a second. That's pretty slow considering. Even just comparing the time to burn one entire disk, this thing blows the 1x burners out of the water.

          • Re:Wow (Score:3, Informative)

            by Shanep (68243)
            1x CD = 150K/s (which by no coindicence is the data rate for CD audio).

            Which I've always thought was odd since:

            * 44,100 samples per second per channel
            * 2 bytes per sample (16bit audio)
            * 2 channels

            44,100 (samps/sec) x 2 (bytes per samp) x 2 (channels) = 176,400 bytes per second or about 172kb/s in the old meaning of kb/s.
            • This is because the CD-ROM (Mode 1, "Data") standard added an additional ECC layer which takes up aditional bytes.

              You can still use these extra bytes for extra capacity if you use Mode 2 (VCDs use this), at the cost of ECC.

              In either case, the CD (assuming 1x read) still rotates at exactly the same speed, whether it is a CD-DA, CD-ROM Mode 1 or CD-ROM Mode 2 disc.

    • Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Firehed (942385)
      I was just thinking.... I could easily go through over five DVDs in 42 minutes, and I only have an 8x burner. And I'll prove it to myself in about an hour, as I've got about a dozen .isos that I need to deal with. How could I not love proving to myself that older sony-backed products always work faster and better than the newer ones?

  • Why burn just 1? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by posterlogo (943853) on Thursday June 22 2006, @07:42PM (#15586410)

    ...when you can set up your own distribution center: Engadget has a peek at Primera's mass Blu-ray duplication system [engadget.com]

    Primera has started shipping the world's first Blu-ray disc duplication system, the Bravo XR-Blu Disc Publisher, able to burn up to 50 discs in one session. The core of the unit is actually Pioneer's recently announced BDR-101A Blu-ray burner, but it's backed up by some sweet built-in robotics to keep the discs moving (we hope -- we've heard this things are a little buggy) and full-color direct-to-disc inkjet printing to ensure a professional-looking job. This being the first unit of its kind, however, it should come as no surprise that it only uses single-layer discs, able to store a measly 25 GB, but Primera says an upgrade will be available "shortly" to allow for dual-layer burning. And if you thought regular, single-disc Blu-ray burners were expensive, you better look away now, 'cause this beast will set you back a whopping $5295.

    Sounds like we'll be seeing surprisingly cheap Blu-ray movies on Ebay any day now.

    • Concurrency (Score:4, Interesting)

      by murderlegendre (776042) on Thursday June 22 2006, @09:02PM (#15586791)

      Is it just me, or were there a LOT more DVD players and DVD media in enduser hands, before the announcement of DVD burners?

      It's almost like they (yes, the perjorative and mysterious 'they') want to have it both ways.. sell the stamped media, the blank media, and the hardware all at once - yet you *know*, from recent demonstrations, that they are geared up to protect any potential infringement of copyrights.

      Or is this just how things work, these days?

        • Re:Why burn just 1? (Score:5, Informative)

          by AJWM (19027) on Thursday June 22 2006, @10:04PM (#15587053) Homepage
          Yeah they have. DVD+R DL used to be about $10/disc ($30 for a 3-pack). Now they're in the $2-$3/disc range. Still a long way from the price of blank single layer DVD+/-R, let alone CD-R, but the price is coming down.

          Hey, I remember when blank CR-Rs were in the $10-20/disc range. RAM cost $50-$100/megabyte (not gigabyte). And DVD burners were still on the horizon at $15,000 each. And we likedit. (Hell no we didn't!)
  • From the article: "Interestingly, the BDR-101A neither burns nor reads CD media of any type. So if you still need CD burning or reading capability, you'll need an additional drive."

    Anyway, the Blu-Ray disks are $19-29 USD. I will need to wait until I can buy a spindle of 100 Blu-Ray disks for 9.99 before I go out and buy one of these things.

    • "CD disk" Capability? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      CD Disk = Compact Disc Disk

      This Public Service Announcement has been brought to you by the Redundancy Department of Reduncancy.

  • Can't read CD media? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Danga (307709) on Thursday June 22 2006, @07:47PM (#15586446)
    Why did they leave that ability out? I know I don't want to have a separate drive to read CD's, but with this drive that is the only option. I can see phasing out CD's once this new generation of media is firmly in place but it is way too early to start phasing out CD's. Floppy disks somewhat recently just got phased out for Christ's sake. I don't see CD's going anywhere for at least 3 more years.
    • With the crap most CD copy protection does, and how quickly it burns through drives, I wouldn't want to put CDs in this thing... Hell, for $1000, I wouldn't do *anything* with it that I could do with a cheaper drive...

    • Re:Can't read CD media? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ivan256 (17499) * on Thursday June 22 2006, @08:32PM (#15586663)
      Incidentally, you can get a CD burner for less than a Blu-Ray blank for this thing.
        • Something tells me that if you're so hard up for a drive *now* that you are willing to blow $1000, and not wait for cheaper, more feature rich drives, you're putting it in a system that is solely designed for BluRay authoring...

          It is a bad precedent to set

          What a load of crap. They're not setting a precedent... They're just getting their drive out the door before everybody else. The CD part of the firmware probably wasn't done, and leaving it out probably shaved days off the release.

          If you don't understand i

    • Re:Can't read CD media? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jeff DeMaagd (2015) on Thursday June 22 2006, @11:29PM (#15587341) Homepage Journal
      I would expect competing drives to offer it soon enough. I don't think it is to try to phase out CDs.

      I think CD compatibility would require a tri-laser head, which exist but might not be production ready yet. CD/DVD burners are generally, one for each medium because each has its own optimal frequency. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are a third, significantly separated frequency from the other two.

      Frankly, I don't see the problem. At that price, it is probably marketed as an authoring test drive or a very rich nerd toy. Many nerds and many media authors tend to have multiple optical drives anyway.

      • Why no love for DVD-RAM?

        Licensing fees.
      • Maybe they'll enable CD capabilities with a BIOS flash
        I am not entirely sure but I think it would require a different laser, so a BIOS flash to support CD's may not be possible.

        Why no love for DVD-RAM?
        People exist who actually use DVD-RAM? I mean it has some advantages such as hardware verification of written data and the ability to be used similar to how a HD is used but because it is not highly supported and is pricey why not just buy an actual hard disk?

      • Re:Can't read CD media? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Danga (307709) on Thursday June 22 2006, @08:47PM (#15586717)
        I don't care about it having the ability to write CD's, I do care about it having the ability to READ them though. This was clearly rushed to the market and a waste of money IMHO.

  • The Summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by Doomedsnowball (921841) <doomedsnowballs@yahoo.com> on Thursday June 22 2006, @07:47PM (#15586451)
    In the end, the BDR-101A is really a device for a select audience. For what it's worth, the drive is actually cheaper than the first-generation DVD recorders, which weighed in at over $2,000 when they first launched. Over the next months and years, we'll see the price of Blu-ray drives start to come down, as players, media, and the technology for more easily creating discs becomes more prevalent. It's also not well-suited for watching Blu-ray movies, since no off-the-shelf software exists. It's a good tool for people who are authoring Blu-ray, and are willing to put up with the single-layer limitation. For anyone else, it's really an expensive toy.

    This just about sums up the entire article: Wow, neat. Don't buy one yet.

  • From the last flamefest... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Frightening (976489) on Thursday June 22 2006, @07:49PM (#15586456) Homepage
    We have already established that Blu-Ray READERS are to be boycotted for the general public good. Why post an article about a BURNER when nobody is going to use the READERS? I mean, everybody reads and believes slashdot, right? Right?

    • Re:From the last flamefest... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bsartist (550317) on Thursday June 22 2006, @07:59PM (#15586508) Homepage
      We have already established that Blu-Ray READERS are to be boycotted for the general public good.
      I believe that has more to do with DRM-infested commercial releases than with the readers themselves.

      Why post an article about a BURNER
      Backups, distribution of free software, etc. There are plenty of uses for a new recordable optical media type that don't involve buying commercial DRM-infested discs.

      Oh hell, who am I kidding? The real reason is right here [thepiratebay.org].

    • Re:From the last flamefest... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DarkEdgeX (212110) on Thursday June 22 2006, @08:55PM (#15586757) Journal
      Actually, Blu-ray Disc is the format everyone should be hoping wins if you have any interest in data backup to optical media. HD DVD is a joke compared to BD (15/30 GB for HD DVD vs. 25/50 GB for BD). And don't get me started on the kind of extras we'll see on BD that we'll never see on HD DVD simply due to the capacity issue (or that TV shows on BD will fit more episodes per disc than HD DVD can, or that longish movies like The Lord of the Ring: The Return of the King Extended Edition will probably work fine on a single 50 GB BD disc, but will likely have problems with an HD DVD disc).

      Blah. Sony may be screwing up this format launch so far, but I really hope they pick up the ball on this. Since it'll be at least another 5-10 years before another optical format emerges, I'd hate to see HD DVD be the one we're stuck with for that duration...

    • DVD(HD) on DVD5,DVD9,DVD20,DVD45 no HD-DRM (Score:5, Interesting)

      by GodWasAnAlien (206300) on Thursday June 22 2006, @10:07PM (#15587065)
      Note, "HD" is possible on DVD5 or above.

      Here are the steps to follow:
      1. Upscale your DVD collection, writing using standard DVD's, in the DVD format, except enhanced for resolution, and perhaps formats (Perhaps Theora, DivX, MP4, in addition to MPEG2).
      Call this DVD-HD.
      2. Find a player that plays these DVD-HD discs. Buy this player.
      3. When/If you find a commercial disc encoded with "DVD-HD", buy it as well.
      4. Remember, don't buy the other HD-DRM discs (Unless it has be worked-around)
      5. You can buy a DVD20 or DVD45 writer for data backups.
      6. If a "DVD-HD" player is sold that plays "DVD20-HD" or DVD45-HD", buy this player.
      7. Or just use VLC on a PC.
      8. When/If you find a commercial DVD20 or DVD45 disc encoded with "DVD-HD", buy it as well.

      0. If you bought into HD-DRM-DVD, then you expect the next step to be expiring media, then rentals only . Have fun.

  • Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by onyxruby (118189) <onyxruby@com[ ]t.net ['cas' in gap]> on Thursday June 22 2006, @07:51PM (#15586464) Homepage
    Honestly, why bother?

    Blu ray would have been relevant 4 years ago if it had been introduced then, but it wasn't. Instead it's been introduced in todays age when you can buy a 250 GB hard disk for less than $70 with ease. The disks for this will be like any other disk in that their effective lifecycle will just be a few years. Like any other burnable disk they will suffer from burn problems and very low reliability.

    It doesn't price justify to buy this kind of media (nevermind the whole DRM bit). Your better off spending your money on hard drives, they hold significantly more data, are an order of magnitude cheaper and several orders of magnitude more durable. In all sincerity, why would you ever want to buy something like this?

    • Four years ago DVDs were still catching on, after about two decades of VHS. Now a new format is on the scene less than half a decade after DVD became dominant. The only thing we've really learned is that it's stupid to maintain your own personal video library, since everything's just going to have to be re-released in the new format anyway. so.. the real winners are netflix and people who like uncluttered furnishings.
      • Well I guess I will have to buy the White album again...

      • Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by evilviper (135110) on Thursday June 22 2006, @09:44PM (#15586961) Journal
        The only thing we've really learned is that it's stupid to maintain your own personal video library,

        Not at all. VHS tapes aren't compatible with DVD players, however, Blu-ray and HD-DVD players are fully compatible with the DVD collection you already own.

        In addition, these high-def formats are fundamentally different:

        They are being introduced at the very start of a new TV technology (unlike DVDs, which were released at the END of NTSC TVs).

        They provide the full resolution these new TVs can display (unlike VHS)

        It's perfectly reasonable to assume HDTV will be the standard for the next 50+ years. Only 3D TV could require something new, and that's nowhere near the horizon.

        Now that our home media has switched to digital (computer) standards, it's perfectly reasonable to assume backwards compatibility for many, many generations of formats to come.

        There's absolutely no reason to re-buy your DVD library, thanks to backwards compatibility.

        These technologies are just being introduced. Maybe they won't catch-on for a few years.

        You're acting like you have to throw away all your DVDs RIGHT NOW.

    • Because in 2 years the dual layer disks will cost 50 cents a piece which will mean you can backup a terabyte for $10 and give it to a friend.

      • Piffle (Score:4, Interesting)

        by onyxruby (118189) <onyxruby@com[ ]t.net ['cas' in gap]> on Thursday June 22 2006, @08:16PM (#15586589) Homepage
        Dual layer DVD's have been out for a couple years now and the media /still/ costs about $2 a disc (best price on froogle). And to get that price you have to buy them by the 50 pack. By the time these disks come down to the price point you offered I'll be able to get a 1 TB drive for the price I offered, and the effeciency curve will continue to favor the drive. So why bother to invest in this technology.
    • In all sincerity, why would you ever want to buy something like this?

      Well once the price of the media and drives comes down, there is a/are format(s) that are somewhat standard, and high definition DVD players are more common how about to be able to master your own HD DVD's? You can't really cheaply mail out copies of the latest video you took in HD to people using hard disks and it also is pretty hard to get a high definition DVD player to play content when it is on a hard disk and not a compatible optica

  • Video (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Silent sound (960334) on Thursday June 22 2006, @07:52PM (#15586468)
    Can this drive burn video blu-ray discs capable of being played back on a blu-ray video drive?

  • It remains to be seen (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mr. Flibble (12943) on Thursday June 22 2006, @07:56PM (#15586492) Homepage
    It remains to be seen if the Beta-Ra*COUGH* blu-ray has any merit.

    Please forgive me. I seem to have caught a cold. It has persisted since, oh, about 1983 or so...

  • im too paranoid (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MrP- (45616) <rob.elitemrp@net> on Thursday June 22 2006, @08:54PM (#15586753) Homepage
    i'm too paranoid to use stuff like this for backups.. sure 25 gigs is nice but whats the use if i just burn everything in 35 copies on the disc incase one part becomes unreadable?

    as media starts to hold more, i just start creating more copies of the same backup on the disc. bluray/hdvd scares me because if it gets scratched you lose so much more than if a cd gets scratched

    • Definitely (Score:5, Funny)

      by blueZ3 (744446) on Thursday June 22 2006, @10:04PM (#15587054) Homepage
      That's why I have my Mac backed up on 3,248 floppies. If anything goes wrong with one, I'll only lose 1.44MB

    • Create/burn PAR2 files with your backups (Score:5, Informative)

      by MojoStan (776183) on Thursday June 22 2006, @10:49PM (#15587218)
      i'm too paranoid to use stuff like this for backups.. sure 25 gigs is nice but whats the use if i just burn everything in 35 copies on the disc incase one part becomes unreadable?

      as media starts to hold more, i just start creating more copies of the same backup on the disc. bluray/hdvd scares me because if it gets scratched you lose so much more than if a cd gets scratched

      One of the most useful comments (for me) I've ever read on Slashdot was one suggesting PAR2 files for DVD backups [slashdot.org].

      For those that don't know, PAR2 files are parity files that can efficiently reconstruct missing or damaged blocks in your archive. If you have more PAR2 recovery blocks than damaged blocks, then you can completely reconstruct all of the damaged files in your archive. The best newbie explanation I've seen is the "PAR & PAR2 files" section [slyck.com] from Slyck's Guide To The Newsgroups.

      If I'm backing up to a data DVD-R (capacity 4,706,074,624 bytes), I'll leave around 4GB of space for the actual data and fill the rest (to the brim) with the PAR2 files that I created for that data. I name the PAR2 files starting with the letter 'z' so that they get burned on the outer edge of the DVD. When creating the PAR2 files, I choose a block size that is a multiple of 2048 bytes because that is the block size of a DVD sector.

      Some easy-to-use tools to create PAR2 files:

      • Windows: QuickPar [quickpar.org.uk] (freeware)
      • OS X: MacPar deLuxe [xs4all.nl] (shareware, $15)
      • Linux/OS Independent (GTK): GPar2 [sourceforge.net]

      Some DVD data recovery software (to get every readable block off a damaged disc):

      • Windows: IsoBuster [isobuster.com] (recovery functions are free)
      • Linux/OS X (command line): dd_rescue [garloff.de]

      Thanks, WuphonsReach.

  • Stupid Sony... (Score:3, Informative)

    by pestilence669 (823950) on Thursday June 22 2006, @08:56PM (#15586768)
    This reminds me of the PS1, which used CDROM. At that time, the HP SureStore burner cost me $1,200. Good blank media cost $20 per disc. Add a little bit of soldering, and I never had to pay late fees for my game rentals ever again.

    Now, right before the PS3 release, Blu-ray burners are available in the same price range. Even the media is similarly priced. If history repeats itself, which it always does, you should be able "backup" your PS3 games for under $400 in about a year.

  • Incredible! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by eieken (635333) on Thursday June 22 2006, @08:59PM (#15586780) Homepage
    Lets look at all the FEATURES, shall we?
    • $1000 price tag
    • Can't do anything with regular CDs
    • $19-$25 for one disc? Can you say Zip disk?
    • Can't burn dual layer discs, although dual layer blu-ray discs are available, completely ASININE!
    • "The drive includes Roxio Digital Media 7 for creating discs, but does not ship with software to watch Blu-ray movies." WTF?
    Sounds like a winner to me!

    • Re:Incredible! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 3vi1 (544505) <evil_NO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Thursday June 22 2006, @09:22PM (#15586866) Homepage Journal
      You act like the prices are really outragous, but this is what we call the "early adopter" cost. I had one of the first CD recorders, years ago (when people were still shocked there even was such a thing):

            - $1995 price tag
            - Could only record 650MB CD's, and at 2x speed
            - Blank CD's started at $20 to $25 each.
            - Could not handle rewritables, as there were none.
            - No buffer underrun protection (i.e., $20+ coasters)
            - The Pinnacle Micro drive I had came with super-beta software,
                      so you were guaranteed to get one of those pricey
                      coasters for every dozen disks.

      The Blue Ray drive doesn't sound bad at all, in comparison. Expect media price to plummet as soon as there's competition, and expect the drives prices to drop 400% within 3 years.

  • Why Blue Ray should win over HD-DVD (Score:3, Interesting)

    by alaloom (966252) on Friday June 23 2006, @10:15AM (#15589637)
    From the first releases of HD-DVD movies, even encoded with the more efficient MPEG4.

    The Last Samurai: 28GB,
    Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles: 26GB,
    The Phantom of the Opera: 25GB,
    Jarhead: 25GB.
    The Bourne Identity: 23GB
    Serenity: 20GB,
    The Fugitive: 18GB,
    Doom 17GB.

    None of these movies could fit in a single layer HD-DVD, and some came very close to filling up the double sided one. Current capacity (double layer), Blue Ray: 50GB, HD-DVD: 30GB. but that's just the beginning. The highest achieved for the 2 formats: Blue Ray: 100GB, HD-DVD: 45GB. The theoretical max: Blue Ray 200GB, HD-DVD: 60GB. I'm really surprised that M$ and Inter support HD-DVD, obviously the Blue Ray has a lot more to offer capacity wise.

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