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 brandpost Sponsored by SAP When natural disasters strike Japan, Ōita University’s EDiSON is ready to act With the technology and assistance of SAP and Zynas Corporation, Ōita University built an emergency-response collaboration tool named EDiSON that helps the Japanese island of Kyushu detect and mitigate natural disasters. By Michael Kure, SAP Contributor Dec 07, 2023 5 mins Digital Transformation brandpost Sponsored by BMC BMC on BMC: How the company enables IT observability with BMC Helix and AIOps The goals: transform an ocean of data and ultimately provide a stellar user experience and maximum value. By Jeff Miller Dec 07, 2023 3 mins IT Leadership brandpost Sponsored by BMC The data deluge: The need for IT Operations observability and strategies for achieving it BMC Helix brings thousands of data points together to create a holistic view of the health of a service. By Jeff Miller Dec 07, 2023 4 mins IT Leadership how-to How to create an effective business continuity plan A business continuity plan outlines procedures and instructions an organization must follow in the face of disaster, whether fire, flood, or cyberattack. Here’s how to create a plan that gives your business the best chance of surviving such an By Mary K. Pratt, Ed Tittel, Kim Lindros Dec 07, 2023 11 mins Small and Medium Business IT Skills Backup and Recovery 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