Tech Shout!

Developer and manufacturer of high-performance digital media equipments Plextor, has announced that in the month of October it plans to launch the PX-B900A Blu-ray Disc drive, which is the first Plextor burner to support the next generation of optical data storage technology. The latest multi-function drive is packed with a rewritable 25 GB BD-RE media disc and a complete software package, including Ulead VideoStudio 10 and InterVideo WinDVD BD.

The Plextor PX-B900A Blu-ray Disc drive can burn over 9 hours of high-definition (HD) video, or about 23 hours of standard-definition (SD) video, on a dual-layer 50 GB disc. The drive is backwards compatible with existing DVD and CD media formats, including DVD-RAM, Dual Layer DVD, Double Layer DVD, DVD+/-R/RW, and CD-R/RW. Designed for easy compatibility with Microsoft Windows-based personal computers, the drive features an ATA (ATAPI) interface.

The PX-B900A drive delivers recording speeds of 2X BD-R/RE (9 MBytes/sec transfer rate) on single layer and double-layer media. For DVD, the driver delivers 8X DVDR on single-layer media, 4X DVD+/-R on Double-Layer and Dual-Layer (DL) media, and 5X DVD-RAM. The drive also supports 8X DVD+RW, 6X DVD-RW, 6X max DVD-ROM, 24X CD-R, 16X CD-RW, and 32X CD-ROM. The PX-B900A drive features an 8MB data buffer.

The Plextor PX-B900A has been developed to strict environmental and recycling standards to meet EU RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) and WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) directives.

With an MSRP of $999.99, Plextor’s PX-B900A Blu-ray drive will ship to distributors in North and South America in October 2006. All retail packages come with a one-year warranty and unlimited toll-free technical support.