Panasonic prepares 4x DL BD-R burner: 50GB in 46 minutes

[roma_turok]

Panasonic is set to join LG with the introduction of their own 4x speed BD-R recorder. However, while LG's GBW-H10N Blu-ray recorder burns are limited to single-layer media, Panny is boasting of a 4x burn to a dual-layer BD-R platter. That's 50GB in 46 minutes in case you're keeping track. No pictures or price but you can expect Panny to go big-and-fast with product sometime later this year.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/03/panasonic-prepares-4x-dl-bd-r-burner-50gb-in-46-minutes/

[gotnotime]

I expect to see more like this soon, its no accident that bluray dual layer media is beoming easier to find athough I'm not aware that it is 4x certified

[DereX888]

yay
I always knew Matsushita is a real 'forward thinking' company, even though it never got as much popularity as some shite companies like sony and such.

[SCDVD]

I wonder about recording quality. There is still a lot to be learned about good media / bad media as well as good recorders / bad recorders. The "data base" of this type of information is much more complete for DVD recordable media and burners- obviously because they have been out much longer. A year or two from now, I'm sure similar information will be available for Blueray / HD media and burners. But meanwhile, there are many surprises to be endured.

[ron spencer]

pretty slow for 50 gig....considering how cheap hard drives are

[waheed]

just waiting for a dual format burner...and prices to fall significantly

[Wile_E]

pretty slow for 50 gig....considering how cheap hard drives are

Yeah I agree. I used to burn and split up my video files to DVD+R, but that was a pain and took too much time. I got me an external RAID-1 hard drive enclosure and have an instant "backup" copy of everything on two hard drives. Once those are filled, I buy more hard drives. $45 for 250GB or $89 for 500GB drives (at Fry's Electronics) is a lot better than buying multiple, expensive, and slow blu-ray discs.

[racer-x]

I'm interested in this because I shoot a lot of HDV footage, but the prices are way too high yet. Actuary, Blue-ray will have to get as popular as DVD's gotten, before I buy one. I'll keep one eye on it's progress in the meantime. I'll play my HDV footage on my TVIX 4100SH I just ordered and store it away for future formats, whatever they may be.

[edDV]

I think its time for a burn warranty. With $20 blanks, the cost of coasters should be passed to the media and burner vendors. After the DVD-9 DL fiasco, I'm not buying and risking $20 blanks.

PS: It isn't just the $20 but the lost time for the burn process. The warranty should also pay >$20/burn hr for our lost time.

[rhegedus]

pretty slow for 50 gig....considering how cheap hard drives are

Eh?

I just transfered a 46Gb Blu-Ray iso from one internal HD to another in 37 minutes. I'd say that 46mins for a 50Gb burn is good going, especially considering that currend 16x DVD burners write 4.3Gb in about 11 minutes.

[DereX888]

first CD-R burners were 1x/2x, and the tech. improved within few years, sme thing happened with DVD-Rs.
Of course since its a NOVELTY device, I dont understand such complaints - what did (some of) you expected? 50GB burnt in 1min? Even assuming it was possible, don't you think you'd need much faster source to read files from...?

[edDV]

first CD-R burners were 1x/2x, and the tech. improved within few years, sme thing happened with DVD-Rs.
Of course since its a NOVELTY device, I dont understand such complaints - what did (some of) you expected? 50GB burnt in 1min? Even assuming it was possible, don't you think you'd need much faster source to read files from...?

I'd expect better than 10x DVD-5 burn times. They seem to be doing that.

[SCDVD]

DereX888 makes a good point. As was the case with previous optical drives the first editions are VERY slow. A user has two options: 1. Wait a year or so to allow for performance and reliability improvements or, 2. Buy one now and throw it away in a year or so when you buy a new one with performance and reliability improvements. My first CD burner was a 2X drive; my first DVD burner was a 2X drive. As for a HD burner, I plan on following option 1. I am afraid of anything on the market right now. DereX888 couldn't have picked a better term - "novelty device".

[edDV]

DereX888 makes a good point. As was the case with previous optical drives the first editions are VERY slow. A user has two options: 1. Wait a year or so to allow for performance and reliability improvements or, 2. Buy one now and throw it away in a year or so when you buy a new one with performance and reliability improvements. My first CD burner was a 2X drive; my first DVD burner was a 2X drive. As for a HD burner, I plan on following option 1. I am afraid of anything on the market right now. DereX888 couldn't have picked a better term - "novelty device".

You waited for the 2x CDR burner? I bought the 1x SCSI original for ~$2000 (company money). I forget the brand but it was Japanese manufactured. It was slow and unreliable.

[ron spencer]

I can transfer 50 gigs in seconds on my sata drives....why bother with such slow speeds on optical media? I am not going to wait almost 50 mins to burn anything LOL

[rhegedus]

I can transfer 50 gigs in seconds on my sata drives....why bother with such slow speeds on optical media?

Really?

The fastest Raptor drives have a sustained throughput of about 90MB/s.....

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/storage/charts.html?modelx=33&model1=678&model2=676&chart=36

[stiltman]

I can transfer 50 gigs in seconds on my sata drives....why bother with such slow speeds on optical media?

Really?

The fastest Raptor drives have a sustained throughput of about 90MB/s.....

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/storage/charts.html?modelx=33&model1=678&model2=676&chart=36

Actually you can get 3-5Gbs (burst) using RAID, but the sustained rate is 300-550Mbs

[edDV]

I can transfer 50 gigs in seconds on my sata drives....why bother with such slow speeds on optical media?

Really?

The fastest Raptor drives have a sustained throughput of about 90MB/s.....

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/storage/charts.html?modelx=33&model1=678&model2=676&chart=36

Actually you can get 3-5Gbs (burst) using RAID, but the sustained rate is 300-550Mbs

That is 90's RAID performance and a single Raptor can beat that 550 Mb/s sustained rate. That is unless you mean MB/s instead of Mb/s. RAID zero transfer scales to the number of drives in the RAID. 550 MB/s would take 8 Raptors or about 10 normal SATA/PATA drives.

[stiltman]

Yes, Bytes not bits

[DereX888]

I can transfer 50 gigs in seconds on my sata drives....why bother with such slow speeds on optical media? I am not going to wait almost 50 mins to burn anything LOL

Just a simple example (out of many other that you *could* find using your own brain) why:
Can you mail (snail-mail) your SATA HDD to anyone as cheap and as conveniently as mailing a disc?
How about 10 of them?
How about 100? (I get at least that many RAM discs in a week)

Sometimes I really can't decide whom I loathe more: plain idiots, or those with a bit of knowledge but no imagination at all...

[Nilfennasion]

Sometimes I really can't decide whom I loathe more: plain idiots, or those with a bit of knowledge but no imagination at all...

I don't know, I am sure there is someone out there who would welcome having a big collection of 1920 x 1080P video sent to them on a hard drive. A producer looking for raw footage to turn into something, for instance...

Other than that, however, I cannot see it working.