The heise online had a chance to test out Pioneer’s upcoming Blu-ray writer, the BDR-101. First units should be on hands of the OEM customers end of month. The pricetag will be “under 1000 euros”.

Here is a quite poor “google”-translation from their webpage:

Since the read head of the Pioneer Bdr-101 works with only one lens, one did without the support of CDs. In the test we could for the first time burn a once recordable Bd-r of TDK. The BD r blank has a capacity of 22,56 GByte, somewhat more than a again-recordable Bd-RH, which comes on 22,23 GByte. The remaining storage location needs the Bd-RH for spare substitution of the defect management.

In order to burn an Bd-r with 2X (CLV, corresponds to 9 MByte/s) completely, the Bdr-101 needed 45:05 min. In addition Pioneer supplied a test computer, on which a special version was installed by Nero 7,0,5,2. The Disc could be read also problem-free with 2X. The average access time to a coincidentally selected sector amounted to 300 ms.

The equipment could likewise describe an Dvd r with 8X (ZCLV) in 10:27 min. The write quality with a TDK blank was throughout good with a small error rate. During the reading of an Dvd r the Bdr-101 reached a transfer rate of 8,2 MByte/s with a middle access time of 272 ms. A two-part Dvd-9 was selected with 7,5 MByte/s and 252 ms.

Read the full story HERE.