Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic) plans to begin selling a Blu-ray Disc drive in Japan in June for use in desktop computers, the company said Friday.The drive is the first to be announced for the aftermarket, meaning it will be sold as an add-in for existing PCs. It comes with a hefty price tag and will require a high-end PC if consumers want to watch any of the soon-to-be-launched Blu-ray Disc movies. Its announcement comes as the first PCs with built-in drives for Blu-ray or the competing HD-DVD format are being prepared for launch.The LF-MB121JD is a half-height (41.3-millimeter high) model, which means it will fit into the standard drive bay of most desktop PCs, and has an ATAPI interface. It’s compatible with 11 types of writable optical disc, including 25GB and 50GB Blu-ray disc recordable (BD-R) and Blu-ray disc rewritable (BD-RE) discs, Kazuya Nakaya of Panasonic’s disk drive manufacturing unit said at a Tokyo news conference.The large data capacity available from Blu-ray Disc could prove attractive for PC users. A single Blu-ray Disc can store as much data as 10 DVDs. Data backup doesn’t put a heavy load on the computer. Panasonic recommends a computer with a minimum of a Pentium 3 700MHz processor, 128MB of memory and 10GB of hard-disk drive space. Drivers will be available for Windows XP, Windows 2000 and the 64-bit version of Windows XP.Playback of movies stored on Blu-Ray Disc read-only memory (BD-ROM) discs is much more taxing on the hardware, and will have to wait in any case until suitable playback software is available. Optical disc software maker CyberLink showed a pre-release of its playback software at the news conference. Naohiko Yoshida, an assistant manager in the company’s Japanese unit, said the launch details have yet to be decided. A high-end PC is needed to watch movies because of the high-bandwidth video stream, he said. In the case of MPEG2-encoded content, users will need a Pentium 4-based machine running at 3GHz or more. For movies encoded in MPEG4AVC, they’ll require a more powerful Pentium D system running at 3.2GHz or more, said Yoshida.The Panasonic drive will be available in Japan as an aftermarket unit from June 10 and will cost about 100,000 yen (US$850). Panasonic has yet to decide on international launch plans.Before it goes on sale to the public, a version of the drive, as well as a slimmer drive for use in laptop computers, will be available to PC makers for inclusion in upcoming machines. Samples of the drives have already shipped, and commercial production begins this month, said Panasonic’s Nakaya.Panasonic anticipates only modest sales of about 15,000 Blu-ray Disc drives on the Japanese aftermarket this year. This is expected to grow to 800,000 drives by 2009, it said.-Martyn Williams, IDG News ServiceFor related news coverage, read NEC, Matsushita, TI Mull Mobile Phone Tie-Up. Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content feature 10 most popular IT certifications for 2023 Certifications are a great way to show employers you have the right IT skills and specializations for the job. These 10 certs are the ones IT pros are most likely to pursue, according to data from Dice. By Sarah K. White May 26, 2023 8 mins Certifications Careers interview Stepping up to the challenge of a global conglomerate CIO role Dr. Amrut Urkude became CIO of Reliance Polyester after his company was acquired by Reliance Industries. He discusses challenges IT leaders face while transitioning from a small company to a large multinational enterprise, and how to overcome them. By Yashvendra Singh May 26, 2023 7 mins Digital Transformation Careers brandpost With the new financial year looming, now is a good time to review your Microsoft 365 licenses By Veronica Lew May 25, 2023 5 mins Lenovo news Alteryx works in generative AI for speedy analytics results OpenAI integration and AI wizardry for report generation are aimed at making Alteryx’s analytics products more accessible. By Jon Gold May 25, 2023 3 mins Analytics Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe