by Ian on Sat Dec 30, 2006 4:53 pm
I'm surprised we haven't seen drives that can read at speeds greater than 16x, especially considering we now have 18x and 20x writers.
As far as them being necessary... I don't think they are. Most of us have been happy with 16x read speeds. With Blu-ray and HD DVD, the transfer rates are higher, so even if they read at 2x or 4x, they're reading a lot more data than a DVD-ROM at higher speeds.
"Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt." - Steve Jobs