Starting from this month, Buffalo will start shipments of the "BP3D-PI6U2-BK" portable Blu-ray disc drive to the Japanese market. The USB 2.0 drive supports 6x BD-R recording as well as reproduction of Blu-ray 3D content.

The external drive is bundled with Cyberlink's Power DVD 9 software that supports playback of Blu-ray 3D discs and also 2D to 3D conversion.

The drive is a Pioneer OEM and supports 6x writing for BD-R BD-R/R DL, 2x for BD-RE/RE DL, 8x for DVD±R, 6x for DVD±R DL and DVD-RW, 8x for DVD+RW and 5x for DVD-RAM . Writing on CD-R/RW media is also supported.

Sized at 137 x 147 x 20mm (W ? D ? H) and lightweight enough at 340g, the BP3D-PI6U2-BK offers increased portability and convenience as it can be powered by the USB port or an external AC power supply.

The drive is compatible with 32bit/64bit Windows XP/Vista/7 OS and it will retail in Japan for about 29,925 Yen ($355).