Pansonic announced today that they have started shipping
samples of the world's thinnest internal Blu-ray Disc (BD) drive to PC manufacturers. While only 9.5mm in height, this new drive can
read and write to single and dual layer BD-R/RE media and is backwards compatible with most existing CD and DVD
formats.
Due to the increasing need for
data volume on personal computers and the gaining popularity of high definition digital images, the demand for Blu-ray discs and BD
drives is rapidly rising. Panasonic believes the world's thinnest BD drive ideally meets these consumer trends as it also provides a
high added value for notebook PCs that are also becoming thinner and lighter. Panasonic continues to bring out innovative disc drives
through steady improvements in their performance and features.
Even with its 9.5 mm high thin profile, the new BD drive features
double speed reading and writing for both write-once BD-R and rewritable BD-RE discs. This feature was facilitated through perfecting
technologies such as improved light usage efficiency, high-speed recording waveform and broader bandwidth of the light-receiving
element.
The product is also capable of reading and writing on BD-R DL (dual layer/50GB) and BD-RE DL discs and will be compatible
with future organic pigment-type BDs.
While pricing and availability have not been announced, samples of Panasonic's
new BD drive will be on display in January at CES. If you'd like to read more, Panasonic's entire press release can be found here.
