AfterDawn: News

OWC launches Blu-ray/HD DVD burner with multiple inputs

Although Steve Jobs has said official internal Blu-ray drives will not be heading to Macs anytime soon, Other World Computing (OWC) has announced the launch of its Mercury Pro Blu-ray external Blu-ray burner which features a quad interface that will allow it to connect to Macs.

The OWC can connect via USB 2.0, FireWire 400, Firewire 800, or eSATA to Macs or PCs and will write BD-R or BD-RE, single layer and dual layer at 4x.



The drive can also notably burn HD DVDs, DVDs and CDs and will work with a myriad of software including Apple iTunes, Apple iDVD 5, Apple Disc Burner, Apple DVD Studio Pro, NTI DragonBurn, Roxio Toast, Roxio Easy Media Creator, and Nero.

The drive is set to ship later this month for $499.99 USD alone or $579.99 USD with Roxio Toast 9 Titanium for Mac OS X.



Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 23 Oct 2008 21:47

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• 5 comments

• lynchGOP

  Ya' know....................Mix them OWC letters up and re-arrange them and ya' get COW!!
  
  Don't know if I want the cow.............really just want the milk.

  24.10.2008 16:02 #1

• Vr0cK

  I'd comment on yours lynchGOP but itd be way off topic lolll none the less you comment amused me =P

  24.10.2008 16:24 #2

• locobrown

  Will HD-DVD blank media continue to exist after the creation of this drive? There is no point in providing HD-DVD burning if media will not be available at a large scale, unless Toshiba focuses on production of blank media. This would be awesome but a the same time bad because it will hurt sony in every way. If Toshiba were to focus and develop licensing of its blank HD-DVD media to disc manufactures, I'm most certain sales of Blu-ray movies would drop because everyone would transcode movies into HD-DVD. Since Toshiba owns most of the codecs, toshiba could in fact restrict or deny its licensing of its codecs and this would force Sony to revert back to its MPEG-2 codec they were using during the initial stage of blu-ray movies.

  24.10.2008 20:25 #3

• error5

  Originally posted by locobrown: Since Toshiba owns most of the codecs,Toshiba owns the codecs?
  
  Toshiba is only a small part of the patent pool for both VC-1 and AVC. Toshiba doesn't have the clout to force Sony or any BluRay studio to use a codec it doesn't want to use. In fact, it's more profitable for Toshiba is studios continue to use AVC and VC-1 since they get a part of the licensing fees.
  
  The License Pools for the codecs used in BluRay/HD DVD:
  
  VC-1
  
  Quote:MPEG LA's VC-1 Patent Portfolio License currently includes patents owned by DAEWOO Electronics Corporation; France Télécom, société anonyme*; Fujitsu Limited; Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.; LG Electronics Inc.; Microsoft Corporation; Mitsubishi Electric Corporation; Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation; Panasonic Corporation; Pantech&Curitel Communications, Inc.; Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.; Sharp Corporation; Siemens AG; Sony Corporation; Telenor ASA; Toshiba Corporation; Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. (JVC).http://www.mpegla.com/vc1/
  
  AVC/H.264
  
  Quote:MPEG LA's AVC Patent Portfolio License currently includes patents owned by DAEWOO Electronics Corporation; Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute; France Télécom, société anonyme*; Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.; Fujitsu Limited; Hitachi, Ltd.; Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.; LG Electronics Inc.; Microsoft Corporation; Mitsubishi Electric Corporation; NTT DoCoMo, Inc.; Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation; Panasonic Corporation; Robert Bosch GmbH**; Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.; Scientific-Atlanta Vancouver Company; Sedna Patent Services, LLC; Sharp Corporation; Siemens AG; Sony Corporation; The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York; Toshiba Corporation; and Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. http://www.mpegla.com/avc/
  
  MPEG LA is the body that licenses the patent pools for the different codecs.

  24.10.2008 22:11 #4

• lxfactor

  blank hd-dvd will exist because the players still exsist.. for a while blu ray content has been extracted and put on hd-dvd disc for other countries hence why its region free.. =]

  26.10.2008 13:00 #5