Asus BD-Combo (Blu-Ray Combo Optical Drive BC-08B1ST)

Introduction

Computer drive standards come and go but not nearly as often as a lot of the other components. Drive standards take time to mainstream and since Blu-Ray won out over HD-DVD it's looking like the next Optical Drive standard is pretty much a done deal. Storing 27GB (single sided) or 54GB (Dual Layer Disc) it's by far the largest optical storage device widely available for the desktop platform.

Right now Blu-Ray drives are in the still pricey but not in the "Cutting Edge" price range. We've seen Blu-Ray Combo drives dropping to the $100 - $120 price range and as they mainstream the prices are sure to drop even farther. If you've been around computers for a while you'll remember CD burners that cost $270 and ran at 2 - 4x with semi-unreliable results and expensive disks that ran about $1 each. Now CD burners are old technology and 50 discs cost $14 and the drives are in the $20 price range. The same thing happened with DVD drives and DVD burners, at first they were very expensive and discs were priced at more than we like to pay. Now DVD burners are around $20 and discs run about $0.50 for high quality disks.

The same thing should happen to Blu-Ray but for now Blu-Ray Combo drives are in the "Still New but not Cutting Edge" price range. Blu-Ray Burners are priced sky high but the Combo drives that can read Blu-Ray but write DVD and CD are in a more attractive price range. Combo drives help bridge the gap between drives before they go totally mainstream and prices drop yet still give you access to read the newer format.

Since prices on the Blu-Ray combo drives have started to drop we got with Asus and obtained an Asus Blu-Ray BD-Combo (Model BC-08B1ST) that reads Blu-Ray and writes and reads DVD and CD format discs. Packed with Asus's innovative technology and Blu-Ray playback capabilities, the BD-Combo drive provides amazing HD content for HTPC and computer movie playback and a significant amount of bragging rights.