OWC ups the speed of its external Blu-ray recorder
Exactly five months after the introduction of the quad-interface, external 4x Blu-ray burner, Other World Computing on Tuesday announced its latest upgrade to the Mercury Pro Blu-ray, which will now burn Blu-ray Discs at up to 8x.
The new Mercury Pro BDR-203 Blu-ray burner can burn 2GB per minute.
(Credit: OWC)This speed translates into about 2GB per minutes, meaning you can finish a double-sided disc (50GB) in about 25 minutes. Other than Blu-ray Discs, the new drive also writes DVDs (all formats) at up to 16x and CDs at up to 40x. Of course, like all burners, it can play back any of the formats it can record.
The new external drive also supports all four computer connections: USB 2.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800, and eSATA. So far, OWC is the only vendor that offers this quad interface in its external Blu-ray burners. Most other external burners lack the eSATA port.
The Mercury Pro Blu-ray burner comes with two 25GB BD-R discs, and a full retail version of Roxio Toast 10 Titanium for Mac. It also works with Windows, but you'll need to get a separate recording-software suite for it.
According to OWC, the drive has been tested to make sure it's compatible with a wide range of software applications, including iTunes, Apple Disc Burner, Apple iDVD 5, Apple DVD Studio Pro, EMC Retrospect Express, NTI DragonBurn, Roxio Toast, Roxio Easy Media Creator, and Nero Burning ROM.
The drive is available now for $480.
Dong Ngo is a CNET editor who covers networking and network storage, and writes about anything else he finds interesting. You can also listen to his podcast at insidecnetlabs.cnet.com. E-mail Dong. 
- by XPSTEADY February 24, 2009 12:53 PM PST
- @480 USD the 1TB Western Digital Element 1TB 3.5" Black External Hard Drive is 110 bucks.
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- by ewelch February 24, 2009 6:05 PM PST
- Sour grapes HD-DVD user? Blu-ray is far from beta. It works just fine, not Sony-only, and your reasoning is complete nonsense. Hard drives and optical discs are complementary, not competitors.
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(3 Comments)you could get 4 of these and have way more storage. at this price 480USD Blue-ray is dead.
also to note a BR-disc is 5 dollars each and you have to buy ten to get this price for 25GB of storage.
BR is a Sony product and like the beta good idea but overpriced for the time.