Emedia by Hugh Bennett

Although Blu-ray Disc (BD) recorders have been available for years, it’s only now that they are becoming affordable, fast and practical enough to interest a broad audience. Pioneer’s new BDR-2203 internal BD writer kit is leading this charge with its reasonable price, solid performance and genuine utility.

The BDR-2203 ($249) is a straightforward retail bundling of Pioneer’s third generation BDR-203 Blu-ray recorder with CyberLink’s BD Solution v.6 software suite (OEM versions of PowerDVD 8.0, PowerDirector 7.0 and Power2Go 6.0). As well, the 5.25"half-height BDR-203 is available from Pioneer by itself or can be found integrated into many of the latest Blu-ray duplication and disc publishing systems from MF Digital, Microboards, and others.

Among its peers, the BDR-203 offers competitive operation and reads, writes, and rewrites all recordable (R), rewritable (RE/RW/RAM) and prerecorded (ROM) BD, DVD and CD disc formats. Single-and dual-layer BD-Rs burn at 8x, single-layer DVD±Rs at 16x and CD-Rs at 32x speeds. PC system requirements needed to write data or play movies are on par with other Blu-ray devices and, since connection comes through a standard Serial ATA (SATA) interface (cables not included), physical installation is effortless. read more...