Plextor launches 4x Blu-ray rewriter with HD DVD readback

Plextor, a well known supplier for high quality professional optical drives, has announced a new 4x Blu-ray ReWriter drive, model PX-B920SA.  This drive is an Internal drive, featuring an SATA interface and a 4MB buffer.  Like the PX-B300SA, this is a dual-format drive, capable of playing HD DVD & Blu-ray, along with the usual CD and DVD support.

Its write capabilities include 4x BD-R, 2x BD-RE, 16x DVD±R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 4x DVD±R DL, 5x DVD-RAM, 40x CD-R and 24x CD-RW write performance.  Its read performance for next generation discs include 6x BD-R/ROM, 2x BD-RE and 3x HD DVD-ROM.  It comes supplied with Intervideo WinDVD8, Ulead DVD MovieFactory 5.5 and Ulead Burn.Now 4.5.  The drive will become available from the end of February 2008 and will feature a 2-year warranty within the EU, Norway and Switzerland and a 1-year warranty in other countries.

With a few manufacturers now offering dual format drives, it looks like this may be the way PC optical drive manufacturers will sort out the format war at least for reading both formats on PCs, much like how dual format DVD +/- writers long sorted out he ‘plus’ & ‘minus’ recordable disc issue.  However, despite the number of HD DVD capable PC drives on the market, we have yet to see the widespread availability of HD DVD writers hit the market, apart from a few high end laptop models announced with internal HD DVD writers.