Pioneer Japan sent out a press release this morning, announcing two new commercial-grade Blu-ray Disc writers. Designed for the long-term preservation of electronic data, the BDR-PR1MC-W and BDR-PR1MA-W are certified by JIIMA (Japan Information Technology Association of Public Interest Corporation) and are capable of writing to BD-R, BD-R DL, BD-R TL (100GB) and BD-R QL (128GB) at 4x. The two drives are also compatible with Sony's long-term, 128GB BD-R media that will be available in late July.
The main difference between the two is that the BDR-PR1MA-W can be used to check the recording quality of a disc. Using Pioneer's Error Rate Utility, the drive is able to measure the RSER (Random Symbol Error Rate) as well as the number of burst and uncorrectable errors on recordable Blu-ray media. In addition, the BDR-PR1MA-W can be used to measure PIE/POF on DVDs and BLER/CU on CDs.
The BDR-PR1MC-W and BDR-PR1MA-W are scheduled to ship in late July and, while prices have not been announced, they are expect to cost about 220,000 Yen ($1,950 US) and 110,000 Yen ($975 US), respectively.
