LaCie has announced the release of their latest Blu-ray burner, the updated d2 which can write to Blu-ray Disc at 8x.
The drive can also write “fully copy-protected, studio-grade movies” at 2x and single layer DVDs at 16x. Dual-layer discs can be burnt at 8x.
Electronista says, “The drive carries both FireWire 400 and USB interfaces and has a second FireWire port to daisy-chain the d2 with other peripherals and save expansion ports. Both Mac and Windows users get Roxio’s Toast Titanium 9 and Easy Media Creator 10 to author Blu-ray discs, though only Windows users get playback software to watch Blu-ray movies.”
The drive is already available and has a suggested price of $450 USD, a bit more expensive than other 8x Blu-ray burners available now.
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Although Steve Jobs has said official internal Blu-ray drives will not be heading to Macs anytime soon, Other World Computing (OWC) has announced the launch of its Mercury Pro Blu-ray external Blu-ray burner which features a quad interface that will allow it to connect to Macs.
The OWC can connect via USB 2.0, FireWire 400, Firewire 800, or eSATA to Macs or PCs and will write BD-R or BD-RE, single layer and dual layer at 4x.
The drive can also notably burn HD DVDs, DVDs and CDs and will work with a myriad of software including Apple iTunes, Apple iDVD 5, Apple Disc Burner, Apple DVD Studio Pro, NTI DragonBurn, Roxio Toast, Roxio Easy Media Creator, and Nero.
The drive is set to ship later this month for $499.99 USD alone or $579.99 USD with Roxio Toast 9 Titanium for Mac OS X.
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Plextor has announced today the release of its first external Blu-ray drive, the PX-B920UF, which is capable of writing BD-R at 4x and can also playback HD DVD discs.
The drive connects via either a USB 2.0 or FireWire meaning it can be used for either Macs or PCs. The drive also has LightScribe technology.
The PX-B920UF features black casing with satin finish and can accept both 12cm full and 8cm mini BD as well as HD DVD and DVD and CD. Featured write speeds are 4x BD-R, 2xBD-RE, 16x DVD+R/-R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 4x DVD+/-R DL, 5x DVD-RAM, 40x CD-R and 24x CD-RW.
As is standard, the drive will come with InterVideo WinDVD8,Ulead DVD MovieFactory 5.5 SE, and Burn.Now 4.5 SE for editing and burning BD.
The drive will be available beginning this month but there was no word on pricing yet.
