Pioneer unveiled a new internal Blu-ray writer drive in the 5.25" form-factor, the BDR-PR1. The drive is designed keeping data archival in mind, more than Blu-ray video, since with increase in capacities of an archive media, so does the risk of random writing errors that destroy data in the archive. Stringent quality control is implemented in selection of its parts, and testing of the drive. Its mechanism also works to reduce recording variability, ensuring higher archive fidelity. In other words, it trades off speed for quality of recording.
The Pioneer BDR-PR1 features SATA 3 Gb/s interface, which is rather new for optical drives. It can write BD-R single-layer, BD-R double-layer (50 GB), and BD-R (LtH) at 6X, single and double-layer BD-RE at 2X, DVD±R single-layer at 16X, and DVD±R double-layer at 8X. CD-R is written at 40X. The drive packs a 4 MB write cache. It is slated for market release towards the end of this month, its pricing is not fixed.
