Pioneer confirmed the European availability of its latest BD writer. The BDR-202 internal drive for PCs supports the writing of both write-once (BD-R) and rewritable (BD-RE) single-layer BDs at 144Mbps and72Mbps respectively.

The writer is equipped with a range of proprietary technologies to enhance writing performance and is also compatible with a range of DVD and CD media; speeds include 12X writing to DVD-R/+R, 6X to DVDRW/+ RW and 24X to CD-R/RW.

In addition, consumers who regularly work with voracious data applications, including building video and music libraries, may elect to use the 25GB capacity offered by BD to manage their multimedia files. Using MPEG-2 compression at a high-definition (HD) bit rate (19.4Mbps), a typical film of 135 minutes requires approximately 19.6GB of storage space ? equivalent to around four single-layer DVDs ? compared to a single BD that can accommodate the movie and a range of interactive extras.

"Interest in HD among consumers is increasing. The scale of the major brands backing the format across IT and CE environments ensures that manufacturers can quickly respond to meet demand. This in turn will increase price competition to add additional momentum to BD," says Chris Tampsett, Sales Director, Pioneer Europe Multimedia Division. "It?s also important to recognise that BD delivers the step-up in optical storage performance that consumers require and content companies need to deliver feature-rich movies and HD gaming on a single disc; the format provides the capacity to ensure that it?s the natural long-term successor to DVD."

The BDR-202 is targeted at professional users working with data intensive applications such as graphics houses and creative companies composing HD content.