Sony has officially announced its third generation internal Blu-ray Disc writer, the BWU-300S, which brings Blu-ray burning speed up to 8x for compatible single and dual layer BD-R media. At 8x, the writer takes about 15 minutes to write a full 25GB disc or 30 minutes to write a full 50GB disc. It also supports 8x writing to 6x compatible BD-R media. It can also write DVD and CD media at up to 16x and 48x respectively and supports dual/double layer DVD writing. The drive connects by an SATA interface.
To help encourage those who purchase the drive to play Blu-ray movies on their PC, the drive includes the "Men in Black" Blu-ray disc, which features BD-Live enabled bonus content, a multiplayer trivia game and various other added features. The drive is bundled with the CyberLink suite for capturing, authoring, burning and playback of personal HD content.
This Blu-ray writer will go on sale starting next month for about $400 and is currently available for pre-order.
At $400, it is likely that only those with deep pockets and need to do bulk BD-R writing (not cheap either) will end up buying this, since LG’s 6x BD-R writer is currently available for nearly half the price. One thing I would really like to see is a major cut in BD-R pricing, since there has been barely any price change in blank 25GB & 50GB media over the past year. For the price of just two 25GB BD-R’s, one can pick up a 100 spindle of DVD-Rs!
