Buffalo and Pioneer prepare to launch BDXL drives

by Pete Mason on 25 October 2010, 14:24

Tags: Buffalo Technology, Pioneer, Blu-ray Disc Association

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The Blu-ray Disc Association announced its new, high-capacity 128GB standard earlier this year, but manufacturers haven't really gotten behind the format yet. Buffalo and Pioneer are soon to answer your storage needs, though, by announcing that they are preparing to launch BDXL burners for PCs.

All of the drives appear to be based on the same hardware and both companies will be releasing internal SATA drives, while only Buffalo will be releasing an external USB 2.0 version.

The drives will support speeds of up to 4x for quad- and triple-layer BD-R XL discs, 6x for dual- and single-layer BD-Rs, and up to 2x for BD-RE XL. They're obviously also capable of burning CDs and DVDs, though the drives are limited to a disappointing 8x for DVD-R/+R and 24x for CD-R/-RW.

Other useful details on the drives are fairly limited, though we do know that the Pioneer drives will ship with the CyberLink's PowerDVD10 suite for both playback and content creation. The drives are only officially supported under Windows, but we're sure that won't stop anyone from cramming one into a Linux box if necessary.

Unfortunately, we still have no information on availability or pricing in the UK, though Pioneer has committed to releasing its drive - presumably in Japan only - sometime in November, with Buffalo likely to follow suit shortly afterwards. Considering that BDXL discs and players still aren't available outside of Japan, though, we don't recommend holding your breath.

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Posted by miniyazz - Mon 25 Oct 2010 16:41
Am I the only one who thinks that speed ratings of drives are unnecessarily convoluted and give no real information? For example, why should 24xCD speed be slower than 8xDVD speed? From the perspective of the consumer, anyway. It's nutty. And I have no idea what 2x speed on BDXL means, or even if it's faster or slower than on regular BDs. :confused:
Posted by BullDogg - Mon 25 Oct 2010 17:24
miniyazz
Am I the only one who thinks that speed ratings of drives are unnecessarily convoluted and give no real information? For example, why should 24xCD speed be slower than 8xDVD speed? From the perspective of the consumer, anyway. It's nutty. And I have no idea what 2x speed on BDXL means, or even if it's faster or slower than on regular BDs. :confused:

I totally agree! I have no idea what it means for BD, DVD or CD, other than what is ‘fast’.

At the same time, would transfer speeds be much better? I think that would probably just confuse consumers more. I can't really think of a good system for displaying speeds.
Posted by Funkstar - Mon 25 Oct 2010 19:12
I disagree with you two :)

It's perfectly logical in my opinion. 1x CD was the speed it needed to spin to read 16bit 44khz audio off a disk. Now that is about 178kbytes/sec. Once you include all the error correction they added to enable reliable data storage on a CD, it goes down to about 150kbytes/sec. So a 24xCD is 24x 150kbytes/sec or 3,600KB/sec.

DVD has the same principal. 1x DVD is the speed the disk needs to spin to handle the full DVD-Video spec. which is just over 1.38MB/sec. Unlike with CDs where the CD audio is written to the disk in a different way to data, DVD is just data dumped on a disk, so the data transfer rate is the same as the “media” transfer rate.

BluRay is a little different in that 1x BD is the maximum data rate for the initial spec of BluRay format footage, this is 36Mbit or 4.5MB/sec. However, movies can now use up to 54mbit datarates for multiple video and audio streams. They can do this because stand along BluRay players have a lot more in common with a general purpose computer than DVD players ever did, so the standard can be updated a lot more easily as technology changes. Also it means manufacturers can sell replacement updated unit more easily.

Now, what is rather stupid is the speed multiples flash memory card manufacturers insist on slapping across their cards. “600x CompactFlash” for example, it really doesn't make much sense. When you see that they are comparing their tranfer speeds to old CD drives, so that's where they get their measurement from, it would be much better if they just did the same as SanDisk with their Extreme series of cards and actually stated the minimum transfer speeds instead.
Posted by Blastuk - Mon 25 Oct 2010 19:56
Funkstar
I disagree with you two :)

It's perfectly logical in my opinion. 1x CD was the speed it needed to spin to read 16bit 44khz audio off a disk. Now that is about 178kbytes/sec. Once you include all the error correction they added to enable reliable data storage on a CD, it goes down to about 150kbytes/sec. So a 24xCD is 24x 150kbytes/sec or 3,600KB/sec.

DVD has the same principal. 1x DVD is the speed the disk needs to spin to handle the full DVD-Video spec. which is just over 1.38MB/sec. Unlike with CDs where the CD audio is written to the disk in a different way to data, DVD is just data dumped on a disk, so the data transfer rate is the same as the “media” transfer rate.

BluRay is a little different in that 1x BD is the maximum data rate for the initial spec of BluRay format footage, this is 36Mbit or 4.5MB/sec. However, movies can now use up to 54mbit datarates for multiple video and audio streams. They can do this because stand along BluRay players have a lot more in common with a general purpose computer than DVD players ever did, so the standard can be updated a lot more easily as technology changes. Also it means manufacturers can sell replacement updated unit more easily.

Now, what is rather stupid is the speed multiples flash memory card manufacturers insist on slapping across their cards. “600x CompactFlash” for example, it really doesn't make much sense. When you see that they are comparing their tranfer speeds to old CD drives, so that's where they get their measurement from, it would be much better if they just did the same as SanDisk with their Extreme series of cards and actually stated the minimum transfer speeds instead.

Because remembering the base rates for different media and then multiplying them in your head is more convenient than having the actual value presented to you?
Posted by miniyazz - Tue 26 Oct 2010 00:23
:D you got done, Funkstar :p

I ROFL'd.

Oh, but thanks for the tutorial nonetheless. It will go in my ‘useful facts’ section of brain.