Pioneer to Launch Blu-ray Drive at CES

HD DVD's latest delay in reching the market may prove costly, as Pioneer announced Tuesday that it planned to unveil a Blu-ray enabled optical disc drive for PCs at CES 2006 in early January, with a launch in Japan scheduled for later in the month.

In order for the company to make its late January launch target, issues related to the AACS content management system -- the same feature delaying HD DVD drives -- as well as a completion of the Blu-ray logo need to occur, Pioneer says.

Toshiba said earlier this month that due to copyright protection issues, the release of HD DVD players in Japan would be delayed until early 2006. The company was not specific on the new timeframe, which could mean the launch would now follow Blu-ray.

With Sony's proprietary format already appearing to have broader support in the race to launch next generation optical discs, the news could mean trouble for HD DVD.

Pioneer's drive will be compatible with both BD-R single record and BD-RE rewritable discs 25GB in size, as well as BD-ROM read-only discs. BD-R/RE discs can be written at 2x speed. The drive will also be able to both read and write to most DVD-R and DVD-RW discs at 8x and 4x, respectively.

Pioneer says it would offer the drive initially to Japanese PC makers to add into their computer systems, with plans to expand to other countries.

U.S. availability of the drive is planned later in the first quarter of 2006, which means PCs with Blu-ray support could appear as early as the first half of next year. No plans have been announced as to when the drive would be made directly to consumers.