Panasonic To Ship Form Factor-Standard Blu-ray Drive

Lucas123 writes "Panasonic plans to unveil the thinnest Blu-ray Disc drive made yet at the upcoming CES show. The drive is 9.5mm high, which allows it to fit into standard laptop form factors instead of requiring manufacturers to redesign systems to fit high-def DVD players as they've been doing. 'Panasonic has already begun offering samples of the drives to laptop makers with the hope that the companies will build it into new PCs.'"

Comments

Re:...what?

[Necreia]

Currently the Blu-Ray drives are of a slightly different size, requiring companies (like Dell) to have non-standard sized disc drive slots that they are placed into-- meaning that only 'tailored' laptop forms can support internal Blu-Ray currently. This would make it so any current laptop mold could come with Blu-Ray.

Re:Speed

[mcpkaaos]

From blu-ray.com:

How fast can you read/write data on a Blu-ray disc?

According to the Blu-ray Disc specification, 1x speed is defined as 36Mbps. However, as BD-ROM movies will require a 54Mbps data transfer rate the minimum speed we're expecting to see is 2x (72Mbps). Blu-ray also has the potential for much higher speeds, as a result of the larger numerical aperture (NA) adopted by Blu-ray Disc. The large NA value effectively means that Blu-ray will require less recording power and lower disc rotation speed than DVD and HD-DVD to achieve the same data transfer rate. While the media itself limited the recording speed in the past, the only limiting factor for Blu-ray is the capacity of the hardware. If we assume a maximum disc rotation speed of 10,000 RPM, then 12x at the outer diameter should be possible (about 400Mbps). This is why the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) already has plans to raise the speed to 8x (288Mbps) or more in the future.

Re:Speed

[Divebus]

Blu-ray 1x data rate = 36 Mbits/sec

Re:...what?

[xENoLocO]

dude... you don't even have to RTFA to figure this one out. The description says "they've been redesigning laptops to fit them"...

Dude, you're getting a DELL

[CacheFlow]

The new Dell XPS one machined have an option for the dual layer blu-ray drive built directly into its monitor. It's about time the announce one for standard laptop size drive bays.

Re:Too late for MWSF

[Amouth]

actualy the X isthe same for CD's as Compaft Flash cards 1x = 150KB/s = 153,600B/s = 1,228,800b/s = 0.146MB/s

honestly it doesn't bother me that they did that.. although i do agree that DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD should have stuck to the same damn unit of measurement... but they kinda did ..

see the orginal 1x. ment you chould burn a full cd in 1 hour .. 2x ment 30min.. and if i am correct that is what they are doing for DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD.. soo to figure out the rate

(diskSize/((60*60)/(xRating)))'s

note that that is only for disk media and not how flash memory is done.. flash is still 1x = 150KB's

Re:The low volume of posts show...

[Borland]

Or it could be that the announcement of a "form factor" isn't the most exciting and debatable topic. All you really need is one post, bubbling to the top, explaining that it means the drive can go into standard laptops. Someone already did that bit, so what's left?

Arguing the merits of 7mm vs 9mm sizes? Yeah that's a real hot button issue.

Re:Too late for MWSF

[Guspaz]

No, 1x was meant to mean the same speed that the audio played at; one-times real-time. 2x would mean you burn/read at twice the rate of playback. 1x never meant you could burn a CD in one hour. For example, a standard CD-R is 72 minutes, and takes.... 72 minutes to burn at 1x. Most CDs are 80 minutes these days. I'm sure you can figure out how long they take to burn at 1x.

1x happens to be 150KB/s, but that wasn't the original definition.

9.5mm vs 12.5mm

[illogict]

AFAIK, all currently available Blu-ray drives were 12.5mm-high: that is the height of most laptop optical-drive units (for nearly every consumer-oriented laptop), whereas those that are professional-oriented (Lenovo and HP) are 9.5mm high. The question is that HP has been offering a Blu-ray drive on some of its laptops (8510w and 8710w) for several months, meaning that Blu-ray 9.5mm-drives have been already available for at least several months...

Re:HD-DVD Had Slim Drives A Year+ Ago

[rwhealey]

-HD-DVD drives are cheaper to make, owing to the red laser. Incorrect. HD-DVD uses a 405nm laser, which is on the violet end of blue. It's the same laser that Blu-Ray uses.

Sources: http://www.thelookandsoundofperfect.com/overview.html http://www.steppininit.com/tay/hd_vs_blu-ray/about_hd-dvd.html

Re:HD-DVD Had Slim Drives A Year+ Ago

[squiggleslash]

While I've made my choice for HD DVD, many of your comments are exaggerations or just plain silly.

HD-DVD and Blu-ray disks are about as reliable as one another. Blu-ray disc manufacturers use a protective coating to ensure reliability, whereas HD-DVD discs don't require it as they don't store data as close to the surface. The net affect is both are about the same.

HD-DVD and Blu-ray both use the same blue-violet lasers. The drives are not "cheaper to make", they're close to identical except for the differences you'd expect from slightly different formats designed by two groups aiming to do the same thing. HD-DVD discs are cheaper to make, although dollar-per-megabyte they come close in price. But the drives have no price advantage. I'm not sure why you think combo discs would be cheaper than regular discs, as you imply above, but a combo disc costs about what you'd expect a double-sided HD-DVD to cost.

Production HD-DVD does not contain 51GB. Production HD-DVD is still two layer. Three layers is coming, but there's some debate as to whether existing players will support it, and that's holding up production use. Three layer HD-DVD is coming, but lay off the word "production" until it actually goes into production, ok?