PLDS, the joint venture between Philips & Lite-On Digital Solutions, has announced the DX-4O1S, a new, faster BD-ROM external drive set to hit stores by April.
The player is only a BD-ROM however and will not having burning capabilities. The drive works via a USB connection making Blu-ray playback very simple. The drive can also read DVD+/-R(W) and CD-R(W) media at high read speeds.
“Due to recent market developments we can expect an increasing volume of movies to be released in High Definition on Blu-ray Discs”, says Jelmer Veldman, European marketing manager at PLDS.
“The market adoption of Blu-ray as the optical disc standard for high definition content results in a growing demand for Blu-ray playback solutions. The portable external Lite-On BD-ROM drive allows users to playback their Blu-ray discs on any PC via a USB 2.0 cable,” added the company.
More details on specs and pricing when they become available.
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Iomega has announced its all-new Media Xporter drive, a game console-oriented 2.5-inch portable hard drive that will provide storage for both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles.
The company says the new drive will make it “easier than ever to use game consoles and high definition televisions and other large screen TVs to share photos, videos, and music collections with family and friends.”
The very portable, wallet-sized drive is USB powered and will use the USB 2.0 ports on either console to offer a plug-and-play solution alongside 160GB of media storage.
According to the press release the drive is “designed for use the Xbox 360 and PS3, the Media Xporter is also compatible with Apple computers and Microsoft Windows and is bundled with software to convert media to console-friendly formats, where necessary.”
The drive is available now and retails for $120 USD and in Europe for 99 euros.
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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.
