One-upsmanship in the ongoing next-gen disc wars continues in earnest. Chief format proponent Sony’s latest foray is a second-gen internal Blu-ray Disc writer drive for computers which comes with 4X (four times) BD-R and 16X DVD+R recording speeds. (“BD” stands for Blu-ray Disc.)
Sony said its new BWU-200S unit cuts by half the total burn-time for its BD-R discs (when compared to its first-gen writers). The new speed should allow a 50GB disc to be recorded in about 45 minutes. Sony also said the 200S improves the burn-speed for standard DVD (and CD), as well, making it backwards-compatible for burning as well as playback (and thus, eliminating the need for dual-writer drives).
BD-R discs are write-once, while BD-RE discs are rewritable more than once. Sony says more than 3.5 hours of HDV (1080i) video can be stored on either disc.
