There's a new generation of disc-burning hardware coming to market, with Blu-ray Disc arriving first and with Samsung in the vanguard.
On Samsung's CeBIT stand, the company was showing a trio of interesting burners, one of which, though, has nothing to do with next-gen discs.
Above is a shot of the SH-W163A. It's a current-generation SATA burner, of which there aren't enough at the moment, we feel. We couldn't find any specs for the drive on the stand. However, it would be logical to assume that the specs are very similar (bar the interface) to the SH-W163 which is an 8x DVD+R dual layer burner (4x DVD-R dual-layer.)
Now for some Blu-ray Disc.
Here we have Samsung's internal Blu-ray burner. It's said to write BD and BD-RE discs at 2x and DVD+/-R at 12x.
The same read/write speeds are claimed for Samsung's second Blu-ray burner, an external model, the SE-B206B. This connects to a PC by USB 2.0 or FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394a).
Samsung will no doubt extend its Blu-ray line-up as it engineers drives that can burn at higher speeds (media permitting). Other makers, of course, are hot on Samsung's tail with their own Blu-ray products.
