"Pioneer Electronics said late Wednesday that it has begun shipping its first Blu-Ray computer drive, which e-tailers have listed for just under $1,000. The interal, ATAPI-based BDR-101A has been priced at about $999, according to a Froogle survey of online retailers. Pioneer did not release a suggested price for the drive. Single-layer, 25-GB Blu-Ray media will be priced at about $24.99, while the dual-layer 50-GB media will cost about $59.99, according to an April announcement by TDK. Meanwhile, the first Blu-Ray movies will be delayed until June."Only early adopters with too much money to spend are going to get excited about this one. Mind you, I can recall paying $600 CND for my first DVD burner, a 2x Pioneer, so perhaps I shouldn't be too critical. Media costs are a real factor here though, as a recent exampled showed: the latest build of Windows Vista Ultimate is over 4.7GB in size, meaning that beta testers need to use dual-layer 8GB discs to burn the install DVD. I was at the Vista Beta Lab 2 last week, an event in Redmond, and even though many of the participants had dual-layer DVD burners, they had no discs because they were too expensive. If a room full of hardcore geeks isn't willing to pay $5 a disc for dual-layer DVDs, who's going to pay $25 for a single Blu-Ray disc?
Pioneer Begins Selling Blu-Ray DVD Burner, $1000 Pricetag
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