Arriving a little late to the HD party (or war, depending on your particular viewpoint), the Japanese tech specialists at Buffalo Technology seem to have found themselves all dressed up with nowhere to go following the official unveiling of their Blu-ray and HD DVD combo drive.
Buffalo Technology clearly didn\'t get the \'Blu-ray wins HD war\' memo. Credit: Buffalo Technology.
An external optical disk drive targeted as “tech-savvy consumers,” the roll-off-your-tongue BRHC-6316U2 MediaStation Blu-ray and HD DVD Combo Drive offers up read and write Blu-ray features and read-only HD DVD capabilities.
Yet, despite its obvious flexibility, the drive’s appeal certainly suffers due to HD DVD now being obsolete as a high definition format, a fact that would surely leave the majority of tech-savvy consumers looking to avoid investing in a combo drive when Blu-ray has been crowned the undisputed industry standard.
That being said, existing or prospective Blu-ray followers with pricked ears, an itchy pocketbook, and perhaps a modest collection of HD DVD discs, will be interested to note that Buffalo’s device delivers single and double layer Blu-ray read/write speeds up to 6x and HD DVD read speeds of up to 3x. It reads and writes conventional DVD at speeds up to 16x.
“In 2007, over 2.5 million units of high definition DVDs were sold in Europe, highlighting the rapid rate at which consumers are adopting this new format,” outlined Geraldine Lynch, Product Marketing Manager at Buffalo. “As the trend continues in 2008, users can be confident that this drive will meet their needs by giving a choice of formats in one device, as well as ensuring investments in historic DVD media are not wasted. For the SMB audience, this drive also provides a good alternative solution for storing data to DVD.”
The new external combo drive also comes with a simple Plug&Play connection for any PC system via USD, while Buffalo claims that its TurboUSB technology further enhances performance and Secure Lock Ware (Windows) maintains the very highest levels of security at all times. The inclusion of Nero 8 also means that media burning is easy as well as providing new features for HD support, backup, video editing and converting, and CD/DVD labelling too.
Expected to arrive through the likes of online retailers Amazon, Dabs.com, Misco, and Play.com at the tail end of April, the Buffalo Technology MediaStation HD combo drive will be looking to sell for approximately £284 GBP ($568 USD).
Somehow we doubt it will prove particularly popular.
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