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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.'"
I'm confused..
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
They are a bad role model for all the other drives that now have to canibalize themselves to keep up.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Man, I was wondering what was taking them so long. The blu-ray disk is a standard size polycarbonate substrate, just like the CD and DVD. What is it about blue laser optics that's been holding this up?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"The drive supports 2X writing to single-layer BD-R (write-once) and BR-RE (rewritable) discs and 1X writing to dual-layer discs."
No.
Then again, as long as they don't have a recording function, who needs Blu-Ray in a Laptop anyway. There's bound to be some software distributed on BlueRay (or HD DVD) sooner or later. And there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to watch a film on your laptop. Or should you always buy both the DVD and the BlueRay versions (assuming you decided to go with BlueRay) ?
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
The parent poster didn't even bother to RTFA: The drive supports 2X writing to single-layer BD-R (write-once) and BR-RE (rewritable) discs and 1X writing to dual-layer discs.
So it does have a recording function
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.
I asked the question for a very legit reason.
I honestly don't care for or against either format... yet. Both are still relatively expensive, and I have no equipment that utilizes either one.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071007-new-blu-ray-discs-with-bd-drm-failing-to-play-on-some-devices.html
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I seriously feel like slaughtering whoever came up with the "X" designation for optical drive speed.
"1X" means a different bit rate for CD, DVD, Blu-ray, HD-DVD, Compact Flash cards, and so on! It is such a confusing metric that it's a wonder it was adopted so universally.
Can't we just measure optical drives in megabytes/sec? This would make so much more sense...
Isn't the Optiarc BC-5500S a standard laptop sized Blu-Ray drive?
I kind of assumed that the link from his name directly to the computerworld site was enough of a clue...
This guy's the limit!
Best prices on NewEgg: Blu-ray is $10 per 25G = 40 cents per gib. Hard drive is $100 per 500G = 20 cents per gib. I'd love a BDR, but as long as hard drives are cheaper, it's just stupid.
On top of that, BD disks have the recordable goo on the bottom side, which makes them less durable than both CDs (goo on top) and DVDs (goo in the middle).
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
Why would anyone voluntarily let a Sony product near their computer after the rootkit fiasco? Burn me once...
Burn me twice...Hey cool! This thing's rewritable!
This guy's the limit!
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
..
.. 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
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
(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
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Actually, on CF and data CDs they are exactly the same :)
And MB/s doesn't always make sense. Compare writing audio data and data data on a CD. Different sector sizes due to different ways of implementing error correction.
See the technical details section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_(audio_CD_standard)
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.
I have a Toshiba A200 laptop here with a HD-DVD drive and radeon hd 2400 graphics. The drive looks standard size to me, but thats just judging by whats visible with it open, I have no desire to pull this out of the laptop to check.
Umm, what Sony product are we talking about here? This is a panasonic drive that uses media developed and supported by an industry consortium, of which Sony is one of a dozen companies.
No thanks. I'll wait for the standard form factor combo drives.
http://store.fastmac.com/product_info.php?products_id=338 last time i checked that will work in my mac book pro with out having to mod its case... or a mac book ... or almost any mac.... oh the star at the bottom says no support for pc... but it says it will fit and its been out for a while. i guess there is no love for hd dvd in this world since it is a inferior product
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
Maybe extensive computer games with lots of sophisticated graphics and cut scenes. But really, we're not yet hitting the limits on DVD drivesx for typical games, where complex visual environments need to be manipulated in the available memory and graphics of the computer itself to reflect dynamic changes.
Until the graphics take a serious leap in capability, there's not much use for Blu-Ray capability for computer software. For backup systems? Maybe it would be useful, but it's still very expensive for that.
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.
Wow, I see posters unwilling to read stories linked to before but it's been a long time since I've seen one not even willing to read the summary! Panasonic is not exactly a subsidiary of Sony.
Regardless what you think of Sony, Blu-Ray is a format with a wide range of hardware makers defining the standard - not just Sony. It's not like the Betamax situation with Toshiba and HD-DVD.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He's talking about the distance from the surface of the disk to the recordable medium
While that distance is shorter, the medium in between is far less fragile than CD/DVD.
Would you (could you!) do that with a DVD?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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...
Sources: http://www.thelookandsoundofperfect.com/overview.html http://www.steppininit.com/tay/hd_vs_blu-ray/about_hd-dvd.html
Given the fact that you give not a single advantage to Bluray, I'll just assume you're at best a Toshiba employee, or at worst a troll.
yea.. opps.. it has been so long sence i used a 1x yea.. the 150KB just always stuck in my head.. hummm i wonder then exactly what the 1x value of dvd's and the other crap are now.. i know flash memory uses the 150KB/s
sorry about that.. and thank for bringing me back my memory of cartrige loading cd burnners..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
It's because this is talking about a Blu-ray drive which is useful for burning GBs of stuff to give away. It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that DRM comes in at the software layer and only comes into play when running software to watch movies produced by studio. It has nothing to do with burning a BD that only has, say 20 GB of home movies that need to be edited.
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?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Even laptop hard drives (that are more expensive) have a degree of thickness to them that precludes things like mailing in envelopes - with a Blu-Ray drive I'd keep using hard drives for primary backup, but probably switch to Blu-Ray discs for copies beyond that. Great for more widespread offsite distribution.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The post was an obviously intentional attempt to cheerlead HD-DVD. I wasn't looking to provide a balanced summary.
Guilty as charged.
Ok, looks like I misread that. I thought you were comparing combo discs to regular discs, rather than HD-DVD combo discs to Blu-ray combo discs (does anyone even make those?) Sorry about that.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Is it just me or does anybody else find this extreme thin fetishism to be a little bit out of control? I can see how thin, in the absence of other considerations, can be desirable from the standpoint of it takes up less space in my pocket or on my desk. However, we see device manufacturers producing products which overheat and die because they wanted that last 2mm of thinness instead of a long lasting and stable product or they put a really small battery in the device, substantially reducing uptime when running on battery, simply to save that few millimeters again. I wouldn't even mind so much except that it is becoming difficult for people like me, who value other qualities besides just "thinness", to find the electronics that we want at a reasonable price instead of planned obsolescence consumer grade junk that sacrifices the functional characteristics of the device for the physical looks and dimensions of the device (among the least important characteristics in my opinion).
Please. Do NOT call DVD "classic DVD", as though HD-DVD is in some way related to DVD. The HD-DVD format has a couple of things in common with DVD (e.g., circular, mostly polycarbonate), but your choice of phrase makes about as much sense as calling a CD an "HD-LP record".
Now, combine this with HD-DVD and standard CD/DVD* in a single drive and I'll consider it. Make me choose one or the other and I decline them all.
HD-DVD was created by the DVD consortium as the next generation of DVD. It is DVDv2. It absolutely relegates DVD to a "classic" status.
Hmm, new vs "classic"? Anyone else get a feeling of deja-vu?
9mm is not a very common standard and is mostly used for smaller laptops. 12.7mm is the most common standard and used in most laptops.