First affordable Blu-Ray writers!

[Harrison]

Blu-Ray writers are finally starting to drop in price. You can now buy a Pioneer BDR-202 model with 3X BD-R and 2x BD-RE speeds for £274.99

That may still sound expensive, but not when you look back at prices when CD and DVD writers were first on the market. I remember paying nearly £200 for my first 4x speed HP CD-Writer in the 90's, and over £200 for my first Sony 2x speed DVD-Writer in 2002.

Give it till next year and they should really be down to affordable prices.

What is amazing when you actually think about it is the very short time span between each of these formats, just showing how quickly the market is moving. In 1998 I bought a 4x CD-R, in 2002 I bought a 2x DVD-R and in 2007 the BD-R Writer is finally becoming affordable. Only 4 to 5 years between each affordable version of each technology. Not long really.

But then you could say the same about computer technology overall. Just think back to what was state of the art at the start of 1998. A Pentium II 400MHz CPU, 128MB of ram, 10GB HD, the first AGP 8MB graphics cards, ISA Stereo Soundblaster Audio, 33MB/s ATA. In contrast a state of the art system these days could consist of A Quad Core CPU, with each core running at 3GHz, 4GB of ram, 1TB HD, 1GB PCI-E DX10 graphics card, 8.1 Surround sound, 300MB/s SATAII. And all that in just 9 years!

[v85rawdeal]

I guess this is now where the Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD format war really starts to kick off...

My money is on blu-ray... But then again, my first vcr was betamax... so what do I know!!!

[Harrison]

As I've said before I think it will be a split market with HD-DVD being the American format of choice and Blu-Ray being the European and Japanese format.

And if this does happen then countries like Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia will follow the format of America (due to how their market work and the heavy US hardware and media cloning (pirating) that occurs in that region.

One thing is certain, all PS3 fans will be sticking to Blu-Ray and any PS3 owners will also end up buying BR Writers too (backups ).

[AlexJ]

I can see most people going straight for a BR-RW drive and not bother with BR-ROM drives.

[Harrison]

Me too. I think BR-Rom drives will mainly be seen in just standalone players under the TV as replacements for DVD players..