Posted by L Leed on 04/24/06 15:45

Blu-ray news:

Panasonic to Launch Blu-Ray Disc Drive in June

http://www.cio.com/blog_view.html?CID=20469

Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic) plans to begin selling a
Blu-ray Disc drive in Japan in June for use in desktop computers, the
company said Friday. The large data capacity available from Blu-ray
Disc could prove attractive for PC users. A single Blu-ray Disc can
store as much data as 10 DVDs.

A high-end PC is needed to watch movies because of the high-bandwidth
video stream, he said. In the case of MPEG2-encoded content, users will
need a Pentium 4-based machine running at 3GHz or more. For movies
encoded in MPEG4AVC, they'll require a more powerful Pentium D system
running at 3.2GHz or more, said Yoshida.

The Panasonic drive will be available in Japan as an aftermarket unit
from June 10 and will cost about 100,000 yen (US$850). Panasonic has
yet to decide on international launch plans.

Before it goes on sale to the public, a version of the drive, as well
as a slimmer drive for use in laptop computers, will be available to PC
makers for inclusion in upcoming machines. Samples of the drives have
already shipped, and commercial production begins this month, said
Panasonic's Nakaya.

Panasonic anticipates only modest sales of about 15,000 Blu-ray Disc
drives on the Japanese aftermarket this year. This is expected to grow
to 800,000 drives by 2009, it said.

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Logitec LBD-A2FU2/WM - External Blu-ray Disc Writer with Apple Support

http://www.i4u.com/article5496.html

Japanese Logitec announced four Blu-ray disc writer drives including
one with Apple Mac support. The Logitec LBD-A2FU2/WM external Blu-ray
disc writer features a Firewire and USB 2.0 interface. It supports
Roxio Toast 7 Titanium on Mac OS X. The LBD-A2FU2/WM will ship in July.

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