Pioneer Japan sent out a press release today, announcing two new 16x Blu-ray Disc writers, the BDR-S11J-BK and BDR-S11J-X. Both drives are equipped with a Serial ATA Revision 3.0 interface and are capable of 16x BD-R, 14x BD-R DL, 8x BD-R LTH, 2x BD-RE and 2x BD-RE DL writing speeds and a maximum BD-ROM read speed of 12x. The BDR-S11J-BK and BDR-S11J-X also write to triple-layer (100GB) BD-R media at 8x, quad-layer (128GB) BD-R media at 6x and triple-layer (100GB) BD-RE media at 2x.
What makes the BDR-S11J-BK and BDR-S11J-X unique is their ability to play back Ultra HD Blu-ray content. When installed in a Windows 10 PC with the included WinDVD software and an i7 or i5 Kaby Lake processor, users can play back movies at 4K resolutions. The two drives also ship with authoring software from CyberLink and are equipped with Pioneer's PureRead4+ technology, which greatly improves the reading performance of scratched and dirty discs.
The top of the line BDR-S11J-X takes things one step further by adopting a low resistance flat cable, anti-vibration parts and high gloss paint. It also has the ability to check and display the playback quality of an audio CD (CD-DA) and, in the case of a low quality level, recommend the settings for optimal playback.
The BDR-S11J-BK and BDR-S11J-X are expected to cost about 22,000 Yen ($194US) and 35,000 Yen ($308US), respectively, when they hits stores in late February.