Slim External Blu-Ray Rewritable Drive From Sony

Sony Optiarc America
announced its first slim, portable and external Blu-ray Disc (BD)
rewritable drive to compliment notebooks, netbooks or desktop PCs.  

The new BDX-S500U model writes single BD-R media at up to 6X and dual layer BD-R media at up to 4X speeds,
recording a full 25GB disc in about 20 minutes. The 6X recording speed
is achieved using 6X compatible BD-R media, and one 25GB Sony BD-R
blank disc comes included in the retail box. Also included with the
drive is CyberLink’s Media Suite 8 for capturing, authoring,
editing, backing up, viewing high-definition personal content and
playing back Blu-ray Disc movies including 3D Blu-ray movies.

The portable drive offers connectivity with a high speed USB (USB 2.0)
digital interface for simple setup and maximum flexibility. It can be
shared between computers for personal video, data, music or image
backup, making it an excellent replacement drive for a standard DVD
drive while offering all the benefits of Blu-ray Disc technology,
including 3D Blu-ray high-definition playback capabilities.  

The BDX-S500U drive can record up to 50GB of data for random access
storage and backup on BD-R (write once) or BD-RE (rewritable) discs, or
up to 220 minutes of high-definition 24M bps MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video on a
BD-R/RE 50GB disc.

The drive also records standard 4.7GB DVDR discs at up to 8X speeds,
8.5GB DVDR Double/Dual layer at up to 4X, DVD+RW at up to 8X, DVD-RW
at up to 6X, CD-R at up to 24X, CD-RW at up to 16X, and supports DVD-RAM
recording at up to 5X speeds.  

Availability
The BDX-S500U drive will be available through authorized distributors, resellers and select online sites starting this month.