Amsterdam – BenQ reported today that it will begin shipping a Blu-ray recorder in late August.
The BW1000 is part of BenQ’s trio optical line capable of also burning content to CD and DVD media and will carry a $1,000 suggested retail price. The recorder can burn to single and double layer Blu-ray media providing either 25GB or 50GB of capacity on a single disc.
The recorder features writing speeds of 2x for BD-R/-RE single-layer and DL (single-sided double-layer) discs, 12x for DVD+R/-R, 4x for DVD+R/-R DL, 8x for DVD+RW/-RW, 32x for CD-R and 24x for CD-RW, as well as reading speeds of 2x for Blu-ray, 12x for DVD and 32x for CD-R, according to BenQ. The drive will be also able to write on double-layer BD-R/-RE media (50GB) at 1x, with a firmware upgrade.
