Instead of waiting for 12x discs to arrive, Pioneer has jumped the gun and released the first 12x Blu-ray disc writer.
The BDR-205 achieves its top speeds with single and dual-layer Blu-ray discs. Full speeds were maintained on 6x Sony and Panasonic BD-R blanks, but Pioneer won't guarantee full write speeds on discs from other manufacturers. Write speeds for BD-RE discs reach 2x.
Aside from its added speed over today's 8x burners, the BDR-205 is a pretty standard product. Pioneer is shipping the burner to manufacturers, such as computer makers, in October, and a stand-alone version, the BDR-2205, is due in the first quarter of 2010, for $250.
This development makes me wonder how long it'll be before we start seeing Blu-ray burners in laptops. The number of notebooks with Blu-ray players seems to be proliferating, but most of them don't allow you to write data as well. Still, you can find burner-equipped notebooks here and there, most recently in Toshiba's Qosmio X500 gaming laptop. As with any improvement to a technology, Pioneer's BDR-205 should help drive down the cost of lower-speed burners. As they get cheaper, I think Blu-ray burners will begin to replace Blu-ray players in notebooks.
However, I wonder whether Blu-ray burners will be necessary by then. In general, optical media drives add weight, bulk and cost to computers, and with other storage options available, such as flash drives and cheap hard drives, sacrificing the Blu-ray slot may be the most desirable choice for consumers. With the exception of filmmakers, whom Pioneer appears to be targeting here, and media pirates, whom Pioneer is definitely not targeting, I think most people will find Blu-ray unnecessary in laptops, regardless of how fast they burn.
