Buffalo HD DVD-ROM Drive Out In Japan

[Ian]

Buffalo's HD DVD-ROM drive is out in Japan. Supposedly, its the first HD DVD-ROM drive for the PC. From what I've read, its based on the Toshiba SD-H802A.

If you look at the pics, it reads CD's at a whopping 15x and DVD's at 5x. There's no way I'd pay 35,000 Yen ($294US) for that.

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/ho ... hddvd.html

[dolphinius_rex]

I'm surprised it can read HDDVD media at 2.4x! I was expecting 1x, or 2x at the most! I guess they want to claim HDDVD is faster then BluRay because it reads 0.4x faster (but good luck burning it...).

[Ian]

I'm surprised it can read HDDVD media at 2.4x! I was expecting 1x, or 2x at the most! I guess they want to claim HDDVD is faster then BluRay because it reads 0.4x faster (but good luck burning it...).

Aren't the bit rates different on the two formats anyway?

[dolphinius_rex]

I'm surprised it can read HDDVD media at 2.4x! I was expecting 1x, or 2x at the most! I guess they want to claim HDDVD is faster then BluRay because it reads 0.4x faster (but good luck burning it...).

Aren't the bit rates different on the two formats anyway?

Haven't found an HDDVD-R burner yet to compare against the BluRay burners

[Ian]

The numbers are different depending where you look, but according to Hugh Bennett's FAQ, they're pretty close.

1x HD DVD - 4.36MB/s
1x Blu-ray - 4.29MB/s