Another company to be bitten by the Blu-ray bug is BenQ. The company made its plans to launch a Blu-ray Disc drive later this year public. This next generation optical drive will be will be able to write as well as read data. BenQ has already developed a prototype and would ship the ready product by the end of the year. The standard design can be used in a number of devices like desktop computers, notebooks etc.We have a prototype ready and we are going to ship before the end of the year," BenQ chairman KY Lee said in an interview. The prototype drive was unveiled at a Taipei news conference the same day. It is a standard 'half-height' drive designed for use in desktop computers, and can also write DVDs and CDs.
For the uninitiated, there is a sort of cold war going on between two next generation optical-disc formats, Blu-ray Disc and the HD-DVD format and looks like BenQ like many other companies have sided with Blu-Ray. Ky Lee however is the opinion that after a while companies will have to support both and this is what he said:
"I believe eventually we will have to support both," he said. Lee also expects a multi-drive that can read and write both of the new formats to be available in the future. "Just look at the history of the DVD standard. DVD+, DVD-, DVD-RAM and eventually DVD Multi," he said, referring to DVD+drives that support all three formats.
BenQ Blu-ray Disc Drives source
Sourced By T.P. Edited by Colbert Low
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