Samsung showed us the first Blu-ray optical drive for PCs back in July (page 54) but it hasn’t yet appeared in the market place. Now Sony has a player with immediate availability.

The facia looks very swish, as we’d expect from Sony, but otherwise it resembles a standard optical drive. However, inside reside both blue laser and red lasers – the latter makes it backwards compatible. As such it supports standard 4x dual-layer DVD burning and 5x DVD-RAM writing along with 24x CD burning.

Unfortunately, with the higher blue-laser, data density comes new confusing naming conventions. Originally 1x for CDs meant 150KB/s, 1x for DVDs 1350KB/s but now 1x for Blu-ray disks is 4.5MB/s. The BWU-100A writes BD-R (single-write discs) and BD-RE (rewritable discs) at 2x – roughly equivalent to standard 6x DVD writing speeds. In our tests, using BD-Rs and BD-REs from both Sony and TDK, and the CD-DVD speed2000 benchmarking application, it maintained its 9MB/s rate from beginning to the end of the process by writing using CLV (transfer rate is maintained at
a Constant Linear Velocity while rotational speed decreases as burning moves to the outer edge of the disc). As such a full side’s 25GB of data was written in 45 minutes. It will also burn dual-layer (50GB) Blu-ray discs but media was unavailable at the time of testing. Note also that the maximum read speed of Blu-ray discs is 2x so it’s not quicker to read data from them.

A large 8MB memory buffer helps avoid buffer underrun errors which is good considering the price of media: TDK’s BD-R and BD-RE discs cost $30 and $37 respectively while Sony’s cost $30 and $39. While this sounds expensive, it’s easily the best-value price for new-technology optical discs that’s ever appeared.

Sony is initially aiming the BWU-100A at archivers and HD video buffs – the latter will be able to fit four hours of 1080i video on a dual-layer disc. Sony also includes CyberLink BD Solution which provides basic playback software, burning software, backup software and an application for recording HD camcorder video direct to disc.

However, initially-released versions won’t have an encrypted Blu-ray movie player but this will be available for free download imminently. Remember, though, that encrypted films will only play if you also have a compatible graphics card and monitor, not to mention a beefy enough system to decode the data.

It’s still too early to say who will win the format war (if anyone) but Blu-ray has certainly got off to a good start over HD DVD which has so far only managed a read-only drive in a Toshiba notebook. The imminent arrival of the Blu-ray-based PlayStation 3 will also help its cause.

At $1400 it’s one heck of an investment, but there will doubtless be early adopters salivating over it already. We recommend waiting for a little while, though, as LG has already announced a competitor and prices should drop sharply.