Sony Optiarc bows rewritable Blu-ray drives supporting 3D playback

Sony Optiarc has announced new rewritable Blu-ray Disc drives that support 3D playback and come in both retail and OEM configurations. The drives write BD-R media at 12x speed and dual layer BD-R media at 8x. (12x speed requires 6x BD-R media.) 220 minutes of hi-def 24M bps MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video will fit on a 50GB BD-R or BD-RE disc. The retail model BWU-500S comes with CyberLink’s Media Suite 8 software and one blank 25GB BD-R. Both the retail model and OEM BD-5300S are available this month through select distributers.