Sonic Solutions to Offer Blu-ray Disc Drive

By Niladri Sekhar Nath

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

Digital media software developer Sonic Solutions has dispatched its Roxio BD software with the first commercially available Blu-ray Disc drive from Pioneer Electronics. The software and hardware will facilitate a series of applications including professional pre-mastering, high-definition authoring and high-capacity storage.

Analysts are of the view that the innovation will enhance optical disc recording. It will allow users to have a backup of up to 25GB of data on a single layer BD-R (recordable) or BD-RE (rewritable) disc, in addition to image-to-disc recording and the archive and playback of hours of high-definition video content.

“We are pleased to partner with Sonic as we continue our tradition of delivering breakthrough technologies in the optical disc market, from our introduction of LaserDisc products more than 25 years ago to today’s introduction of the first Blu-ray Disc Drive,” said Andy Parsons, senior vice president at Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc., in a press release. “Sonic’s software has helped establish and grow the market for CD and DVD creation and has made them the clear leader in their field. Given the depth and breadth of our joint experience, this effort by our two companies bodes well for the future success of this exciting next-generation optical format.”


The Pioneer BDR-101A will help professionals carry out testing and evaluation of commercial Blu-ray Disc releases in preparation for replication. Roxio digital media software for Blu-ray Disc will also enable image-to-disc recording, saving of BD disc images, and data transfer for file backup on BD.

Users can store DV camcorder video and record high-definition television shows on a properly equipped personal computer as well. The BDR-101A comes with BD-ROM movie and DVD playback and recording facility.

“Given Pioneer’s contributions to the development of optical media, their choice of Roxio is a gratifying validation of our high-definition authoring leadership,” said Stan Wong, general manager of Roxio’s Sonic Solutions, in the release. “Sonic is firmly committed to encouraging the success of the next-generation high- definition formats like BD at all levels, and enabling data and video recording for the world’s first shipping BD drive is a significant achievement for us and a major milestone in the launch of this powerful new format.”

For more information, visit www.pioneerelectronics.com and www.sonic.com.

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Niladri Sekhar Nath is a contributing writer for TMCnet covering telecommunications, service providers and networking.