In May 2006, Pioneer Electronics let out news that it was going to ship out the industry’s first Blu-ray computer drive. Randy Hudson, member of the DVD Association, and president and CEO of Broadness, a media service company which offers A/V media services, digital cinema media services, and online video and audio media delivery solutions says "In order to serve our clients' needs at the highest level, we must anticipate their needs for uses of new media formats. The professional DVD production community has always counted on Pioneer to deliver technologies, products and support that allows us to exceed our clients' expectations."

25GB of data can be burned up on a single-layer Blu-ray disc with the BDR-101A through blue laser technology. The Blu-ray computer drive ships with blank TDK Blu-ray discs and Roxio Blu-ray Disc software.

The BDR-101A has DVD write speeds which may be considered slow-- 8X to single-layer -R and +R; 4X to -RW and +RW; 2.4X to double-layer +R; and 2X to double-layer -R. When writing to BD-R and BD-RE (rewritable) the write speed is 2X.

Once we are able to test it in live and in person we will add performance details.

Pricewise, this computer drive will cost you and the Blu-ray discs are pricey as well. After a general search on the web, you may see that BD-RE discs can cost you around $20 each while TDK BD-R discs sell for around $18.

Overall, if you check personal consumer reviews, many of these posts can’t help but comment on the price of the computer drive. Many are comparing it to the price of DVD’s when they first came out. Because of the pricey amount, people tend to comment more on the cash they need to give up rather than the take home of computer technology they’ll be taking with them. Of course this may concern the consumer, but in order to really see the product clearly, he/she should take a step back from the comments on the price in order to really review the features of the drive. Once he/she has been able to objectively consider the drive’s features and its quality of performance, then he/she may compare this with the cost and rate it accordingly. This gives the Blu-ray computer drive a much more fair chance at proving itself in the tech world and what it can offer.  Take all these points into consideration when you make your final decision and purchase of a drive.