The German website heise online has gotten their hands on Pioneer's upcoming Blu-ray writer, the BDR-101. While AACS wasn't enabled on the drive, they were still able to run a few tests. Translated from German:
Since the read head of the Pioneer BDR-101 works with only one lens, one did without the support of CDs. In the test we could for the first time burn a once recordable Bd-r of TDK. The BD-R blank has a capacity of 22,56 GByte, somewhat more than a again-recordable BD-RE, which comes on 22,23 GByte. The remaining storage location needs the BD-RE for spare substitution of the defect management.
In order to burn an BD-R with 2X (CLV, corresponds to 9 MByte/s) completely, the BDR-101 needed 45:05 min. In addition Pioneer supplied a test computer, on which a special version was installed by Nero 7,0,5,2. The Disc could be read also problem-free with 2X. The average access time to a coincidentally selected sector amounted to 300 ms.
The equipment could likewise describe an DVD-R with 8X (ZCLV) in 10:27 min. The write quality with a TDK blank was throughout good with a small error rate. During the reading of an DVD-R the BDR-101 reached a transfer rate of 8,2 MByte/s with a middle access time of 272 ms. A two-part Dvd-9 was selected with 7,5 MByte/s and 252 ms.
According to the article, Pioneer expects to ship the BDR-101 to their OEM customers by the end of the month. The drive is expected to go for $975 which is almost double that of the Samsung SH-B022. If you'd like to read more, the entire article can be found here.
