Pioneer Japan sent out a press release this morning, announcing two new professional-grade Blu-ray Disc writers. Designed for businesses, libraries and museums looking to archive important data to Blu-ray Disc, the BDR-PR1M and BDR-PR1MA follow the new guidelines set by the new Optical Archive Group (OPARG ) formed by Pioneer, Mitsubishi Kagaku Media and Victor Advanced Media. To reduce variations in recording quality, the two drives write to BD-R, 50GB BD-R DL and 100GB BD-R XL discs at 4x using CLV (Constant Linear Velocity). They also feature an extra-durable tray mechanism and are 3x more dust resistant than Pioneer's BDR-207 series. The main difference between the two is that the BDR-PR1M can be used to check the recording quality of a disc. With the included software, it is able to measure the RSER (Random Symbol Error Rate) as well as the number of Burst Errors.
The BDR-PR1M and BDR-PR1MA are scheduled to ship in early November and, while prices have not been announced, they are expect to cost about 220,000 Yen ($2,829 US) and 110,000 Yen ($1,414 US), respectively.
In support of Pioneer's new Blu-ray Disc writers, Mitsubishi Chemical (MKM) has released its new professional, archival-grade 100GB BD-R BDXL media. Designed to work with the BDR-PR1M and BDR-PR1MA, these new discs have a lifetime of more than 50 years when stored at room temperture (25° C) and 50% relative humidity.
