The first new drive, the BDR-102 will also support CD-R/RW discs, another disc format missing from the company's current product, the BDR-101. The BDR-102 is due to ship early next year, possibly in two versions, one with an IDE interface, the other with a SATA connector. It's not clear at what speeds the BDR-102 will write single- and dual-layer, 25GB and 50GB BD-R and BD-RE discs.Talk about surprising news. If you'd like to read more, the entire article can be found here.
Further out, the BDR-103 will bring on board support for HD DVD, presumably recordable and rewriteable versions of the format as well as pre-recorded discs.
Update: The German website, heise online, has reported that the BDR-103 will only be able to read HD DVD media and not write to it. They also mention that Pioneer plans to ship the drive in October of 2007.
