I/OMagic announced the availability of internal and external Blu-Ray drives from their new redesigned website. The addition of the Blu-Ray optical drives is an ideal extension of the I/OMagic optical drive line, which already encompasses internal and external dual layer, LightScribe, and slim notebook drives.

"There is strong demand for Blu-Ray burners for video editing, data backup and archiving, playing high resolution movies and state-of-the-art games," says Don Wallis, VP of Marketing. "With ever increasing need for more storage for video, photos, and data, Blu-Ray discs satisfy this need with their huge 25GB to 50GB data storage capacity on a single disc."

As a pioneer of the CD and DVD optical storage market I/OMagic created enduring relationships with its customers. Playing Blu-Ray movies on your PC can be very CPU intensive and requires the latest hardware and software, and I/OMagic wants to make sure that their loyal and valued customers are aware of such necessities.

"We decided to test our technical support needs for the Blu-Ray drives by first offering it exclusively on our own site," says Jonathan Nguyen, Product Manager. "We want to make sure that consumers are ready for Blu-Ray technology and we feel that it is our responsibility to make sure they know that Blu-Ray may require more power from PC technology when they add a Blu-Ray drive to previous generation PCs and may require more powerful hardware and software to run properly. Fortunately, Cyberlink, the authoring and viewing software included with the Blu-Ray drive, has a quick and easy diagnostic utility to check if your PC is up to spec for Blu-Ray."
 
I/OMagic's Blu-Ray BDRE optical drive requirements for high definition playback:

• Pentium D 3.4GHz or faster CPU
• 1GB or higher RAM
• HDCP capable graphics card with 256MB RAM
• PCI Express x16
• 1920x12000 resolution, 32bit color
• 60GB or higher HDD capacity
• HDCP capable monitor or TV

GPU recommendations:

• nVidia: GeForce 6600GT/7600GT/7800GTX512/7900GX2/7900GTX/7950GX2 or better
• ATI: X1600/X1800/X1900 series or better