Pioneer BDR-101A Blu-ray Disc/DVD Disc Internal Writer Review » Handy Gadgets: Information, news and highlights of handy gadgets for you, the home or travel.

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Matthew Elliott, writing on CNET.com, reviews the "first Blu-ray burner to hit the market". 'Pioneer won the Blu-ray burner race, but it cut some corners on the way to the finish line. The company's BDR-101A, an internal PC drive, is the first drive available that uses Sony's Blu-ray disc (BD) format. When DVD burners first arrived and CD burners before that, the first-generation drives were expensive and slow. The Pioneer BDR-101A's sky-high price of $999 and its slow 2X write speeds, therefore, should come as no surprise. What did surprise us was the fact that the drive supports neither dual-layer 50GB Blu-ray discs nor plain Jane CDs. Sony just announced its first Blu-ray drive, the BWU-100A, which supports both of these disc types, and it costs $250 less.

We haven't tested Sony's drive yet, but it looks to be the better pick of the two because it provides support for more discs types for less dough. Both drives, however, are aimed at professionals and well-heeled enthusiasts; consumers are wise to wait until more Blu-ray players hit the market and prices go down while write speeds go up.'

Features:
• Blu-ray Disc delivers the capacity for the best possible high definition audio and video quality.
• HDTV provides six times more picture information than standard definition TV so you don't miss a single detail. In order to do that, HDTV requires more bits per second and more gigabytes per disc. So if you want great HDTV, you'll also want a Blu-ray Disc player or recorder to watch movies in HD and to record HDTV programming.
• You'll find Blu-ray Disc hardware from Pioneer and nearly all other consumer electronics companies.

Read: Pioneer BDR-101A Review - CNET