Philips and Lite-On push out external Blu-ray drive
Yeah, just another Blu-ray drive for your perusal: this one, called the DX-4O1S, reads at 4x, and will be the first by Philips and Lite-On Digital Solutions, that joint venture formed about a year ago. Exciting stuff, this; due out next quarter.






















Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
CassilineKnight @ Feb 28th 2008 8:35AM
I'm sorry guys but I'm not that smart when it comes to sh*t like this and computers...
Does this mean that you could watch Bluray Movies on your computer or something? And if so wouldn't you have to have a super powerful computer (graphically, etc) in order to experience the high quality picture that Bluray provides? Also can someone to burn things to a Bluray disc with this drive?
Just what exactly could a person use this thing for?
Xyzzy @ Feb 28th 2008 10:23AM
You need a computer that has a video card and display that's HDCP compliant. It would also need a very powerful CPU/video card (probably anything within the past 6-12 months would work ok).
This drive can't burn Blu-Ray disks either.
John B @ Feb 28th 2008 11:45AM
Easy. Data recovery, watching BD movies on the go, presentation materials without putting the info directly on the hard drive...there are lot of reasons why this isn't a bad idea.
There are a number of BD writers out there and I've heard that some places sell blank, 25GB discs for as little as $6. So, this could be idea for reading from data BDs whie on the go.
For example, if you do a lot of traveling, your laptop doesn't have a BD drive, and you need to carry a lot of data, this could be an ideal situation. (Yes, you could just make sure that you have a big hard drive, but just stick with me here...)
Or maybe you backup your critical data onto BD-R on a regular basis, your main PC just died, and you REALLY need the project that you've been working on for the past two years. This assumes that your real name isn't Steven Thrasher, of course. :)
And, of course, the most obvious reasons -- watching your BD movies while you're traveling and you don't have a BD drive in your laptop.
Obviously, you're going to have to judge for yourself the value of this, a separate BD writer, and BD discs versus multiple DVD-Rs or multiple dual-layer DVD-Rs that probably work just fine in your laptop drive. But you asked what this could be used for, so I gave you some reasons. Whether doing such things justifies the cost is up for each person to decide for himself. ;)
Dave @ Feb 28th 2008 9:15AM
Yeah! More more more!
pquistgard @ Feb 28th 2008 10:55AM
"Exciting stuff, this": Hard to know whether Ryan was sarcastic or not. It definitely looks nice (at least, in the photo).
andy @ Feb 28th 2008 11:36AM
I still don't understand why they make read only drives anymore since the burner tech is only about 10% more expensive.
lucyfan62 @ Feb 28th 2008 11:42AM
When is someone going to give us an affordable Blu-ray burner???? They make blank disks but no computer or laptop that I know of comes with anything but a drive that will play Blu-ray and burn standard DVDs and CDs. Come on guys! For video editing, Sony offers Blu-ray production capability with it's Vegas software, but they still don't offer a burner in any of their computers so that you can accomplish this!
kevin @ Feb 28th 2008 11:58AM
I could be missing something here (I haven't joined the Blu-Ray camp myself yet), but isn't this just a USB version of this?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106227
And if that's the case, couldn't you just buy an external enclosure to toss this into? I must be missing something - could someone please clue me in?
zoran @ Feb 28th 2008 6:45PM
What is the point of 4X, 6X, 8X, 12X, .....X if you are only watching and reading movies. I have a ps3 and it never skips, jipps, or whatever. I understand burning speed, but reading, isn't all this ? x pointless. please reply.
Z