Philips introduces Blu-ray players and media

Philips has announced the availability of its first Blu-ray devices, the TripleWriter (SPD7000) all-in-one PC Writer and a home entertainment player (BDP9000). Also announced are two types of recordable media, a 25GB single-layer BD-R (Recordable) and BD-RE (Recordable and Erasable). The Blu-ray discs are available now in North America and Europe, while the Triple Writer and Blu-ray player will be available in both markets later in the year. The new TripleWriter (SPD7000) features recording and playback capabilities of all popular storage formats including CD, DVD and Blu-ray, which allows users to select their media of choice depending on the preferred application. Philips’ TripleWriter features a 2x (72MB/s continuous-data rate) read and writer speed on BD-ROM, BD-R and BD-RE media. The drive reads and writes a variety of legacy media including: CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD+R, DVD+R DL, DVD-R, DVD-R DL, DVD+RW and DVD-RW.

The BDP9000, Blu-ray home entertainment player will be made available later this year in North America. Product specifications will be available closer to the launch date.

In addition to the TripleWriter and home entertainment player, Philips has made its 25GB BD-R and BD-RE discs available to consumers in North America and Europe. The 25GB single-layer BD-R discs give the highest storage yet for High Definition (HD) entertainment and digital archiving, amounting to more than 6 hours of HD video, 12 hours of standard DVD quality, or 36 standard audio CD’s on one disc.

As co-inventor of the compact disc, Philips is passionate about fuelling the growth of Blu-ray as the next generation HD format for both PC and video platforms. Blu-ray is the most advanced optical storage standard today satisfying the future requirements of storage capacity, data speeds, copy protection, interactivity, convenience and cost.