Other World Computing today released its new line of OWC Mercury Pro Blu-ray "Quad Interface" external drive solutions. The first Blu-ray external drives on the market offering a "Quad Interface" of FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0, and eSATA, the OWC Mercury Pro drives feature 4X Blu-ray disc write speed; a data transfer rate up to 150MB per second; Plug and Play connection flexibility; and compatibility with both Windows and Macintosh systems.

Immediately available and priced starting at $499.99, the Mercury Pro Blu-ray external drive reads and/or writes virtually all optical media, including Blu-ray, HD-DVD, DVD-RAM, and CD-R/RW. The external drives are based on the Panasonic SW-5583 designs.



OWC Mercury Pro SW-5583: $499.99. Writes and reads Blu-ray, DVD, DVD-RAM, CD-R/RW discs. Includes all connection cables and two 25GB BD-R discs.

OWC Mercury Pro SW-5583T: $579.99. Writes and reads Blu-ray, DVD, DVD-RAM, CD-R/RW discs. Includes all connection cables, starter media, and full retail version of Roxio Toast 9 Titanium (Mac OS X).

Basic specifications:

Chipset: Oxford 934DSB

Interface:
- FireWire 800 (1394b) - 2 Ports
- FireWire 400 (1394a) - 1 Port
- eSATA - 1 Port
- USB 2.0 (1.1 Backwards Compatible) - 1 Port

Write

BD-R (Single Layer/Double Layer): 4x
BD-RE (Single Layer/Double Layer): 2x
DVD-RAM: 5x
DVD-R: up to 16x
DVD-R (DL) up to 8x
DVD-RW up to 6x
DVD+R up to 16x
DVD+R (DL) up to 8x
DVD+RW up to 8x
CD-R up to 40x
CD-RW up to 24x

Read:

BD-R (Single Layer/Double Layer): 4x
BD-RE (Single Layer/Double Layer): 2x
DVD-RAM: 5x
DVD-R: 16x
DVD+R: 16x
DVD-R DL: 8x
DVD+R DL: 8x
DVD-RW: 8x
DVD+RW: 8x
DVD-ROM: 16x
CD-ROM: 40x
CD-R: 40x
CD-RW: 32x

Buffer Size: 8MB