Ebuyer has had blu-ray drives available for months at under £130. Recently the price has dropped to under £100.

Great article, but I don;t know that most of us care that much at the moment, the majority are not mug enough to buy into HD until one or other format takes centre stage. 

Personally reading between the lines, my own preference is for HD-DVD, however regardless of format I object to effectively having to replace all my kit to get a picture that's for the most part only better if you're relatively close to the screen, and generally requires a larger screen to get the best out of.

Still HDs got a long way to go before it becomes the norm, so plenty of time to win the lottery...!

Don't bother shipping it here on my account, just dump it in your harbour for I for one don't want it.

I like how they try to make an even more than usual crippling of a device out as a feature.

It's a bloody waste of lasers.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136133

why not pick up a LG Black Bluray/HD dvd drive for $300USD

Good to see high def drives on sale at reasonable prices. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. Calling it the 'world's first' is pushing it though. I've owned a Pioneer BDC-202 internal drive since July. The only thing different about the drive in the article is that it is an external unit. LaCie have had an overpriced external BD burner on the market for ages. Call that the 'World's First'

Toshiba & co are slow at getting their HD-DVD hardware out there and deserve to lose in the PC high def battle ground. I use one of their HD-DVD laptop drives (TS-L802A) in an external slimline caddy. Took about five minutes to make.

When the Blu-Ray camp eventually get the same idea, it is front page news....

Most potential owners are just interested in high definition playback for the moment. I for one am not ready to pay twice or three times the price in order to burn BD-RE or HD-DVD-R. I wish we were in this situation a YEAR ago....

Scan have been selling Pioneer sata BD-ROM drives for ages, and you get them for £100 currently, a world first for philips-liteon perhaps, but not first ever.

OK lets assume that customers already have a 'HD Ready' TV, not a typical LCD monitor, so their screen will have the necessary HDCP compliance.
Lets also assume that they have an nVidia 8400/8600 or ATI 2400/2600 card or better. And a good 2006 CPU. Or better. Plus a recent driver. Or better..
These customers can plug and play.
Everybody else is likely to be disappointed, as they will either see a HDCP error or just a black screen.
The packaging is very unlikely to explain that using AnyDVD-HD will get around HDCP piracy limitations.
So customers will either have to spend extra on upgrading their PC and/or screen..........or.........they will return the 'damn thing' to the shop.

There isn't much of a compromise possible. Your £20+ HD disc will either play nicely or it won't.

HD Failure anyone?
It's the industry's fault for making it too difficult (except for the determined) and for not getting the message across about what you need to buy first before your upgrade kit will work as advertised.

PS
Lowly 7600GS + E6400 + AnyDVD-HD + Cyberlink Ultra 7.3 works for Blu-Ray & HD-DVD. I know this because I tried it. But it was 50/50 whether it would work or not.

BD-Rom drives for PC's have been available for YEARS!

They've been a little costly for the average consumer, but they've still been available to anyone with the cash for over two years now.

How can they call this the worlds first BD-ROM drive? The Pioneer BDC-202BK has been out for a while already. I've had this Pioneer BD-ROM drive for over a month now and this Philips/Lite-On drive isn't due out until December.

There has been BD-ROM only drivers about two months already: http://geizhals.at/deutschland/?cat=blurom

And how is this different from this thing?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827129015

The beauty with this is that you can play Bluray at an affordable price, yeh their is other bd-roms out there, but they are also writers and obviously cost considerably more, but this at least gives you the option to choose a player over a writer..

Not that I want to rain on anyone's parade but £125 for a ROM is hardly headline news when you can get a writer for less than a 100 bucks here:

http://www.saverstore.com/productinfo/product.aspx?catalog_name=Savastore&product_id=20017979&pid=10&tid=79