Philips introduces Blu-ray players in North America and Europe

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 20 June 2006 19:48

Business IT - Technology

Philips Electronics, a founding member of the Blu-ray Disc Association, has announced the upcoming availability of its first Blu-ray devices, the TripleWriter all-in-one PC Writer and a home entertainment player in North America and Europe. The Blu-ray discs are available now in North America and Europe, while the Triple Writer and Blu-ray player will be available in North America and Europe later in the year.

The new TripleWriter drive features recording and playback capabilities of popular storage formats including CD, DVD and Blu-ray, which allows users to select their media of choice depending on the preferred application.  

“Blu-ray enables unprecedented High Definition viewing experience. To consumers, Philips will be able to ensure complete end-to-end High Definition home entertainment, through the availability of discs, recorders and playback devices,” said Matthew Moran, general manager, Philips Consumer Electronics Australia.  

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.

“We believe that consumers will develop the same veracity for HD content as they did when the CD and DVD were recognised as the best audio and video storage devices of their time,” said Moran.