techPowerUp! News :: Marshal Spins Out Slim External BD Writer

Thursday, July 23 2009

Marshal Spins Out Slim External BD Writer

Japanese company Marshal corp. released a new slim external Blu Ray disc (BD) writer drive. The Marshal MAL-BDP02U2 is a USB powered (and connected) external drive that uses a slot-in loading mechanism. It burns single-layer BD-R and BD-RE discs at 2x, dual-layer BD-R/RE at 1x, DVDÂ±R at 8x, dual-layer DVDÂ±R at 2.4x, DVDÂ±RW at 6x, DVD-RAM at 5x, and can burn all kinds of CDs at 8x. BDs are read at 2x, DVDs at 8x, dual-layer DVDs at 6x, and CDs at 24x. The unit measures 135 (W) x 145 (D) x 20 (H) mm, and weighs in at 304 g. It hits Japanese market soon at 22,800 JPY, which is around US $240.

posted by btarunr - 8:43 PM | Related News

User comments

by AltecV1 (July 23rd - 8:59 PM) - Reply

very cool but kinda expencive:(

by btarunr (July 23rd - 9:02 PM) - Reply

It's a Blu Ray writer that's external + slim + USB powered (no DC adapter). Not that bad a price considering the average internal BD writer costs $170.

by AltecV1 (July 23rd - 9:05 PM) - Reply

ok you got me there:o

by newtekie1 (July 23rd - 9:05 PM) - Reply

Not a bad price for a slim Blu-Ray burner.

by Woody112 (July 23rd - 10:07 PM) - Reply

Might have to get this for my macbook pro, and just put another 500gb hdd in the place of my internal optical drive. I like the thin design.

by freaksavior (July 23rd - 10:11 PM) - Reply

woot! i want one

by wiak (July 23rd - 11:26 PM) - Reply

severly bottlenecked becose of usb hehe :p

by LAN_deRf_HA (July 24th - 12:01 AM) - Reply

Why does it have to be slim if it's external? Especially if it lays flat.. I know their rooms are small in japan but the ceilings aren't that low.

by erocker (July 24th - 12:16 AM) - Reply

by: LAN_deRf_HA
Why does it have to be slim if it's external? Especially if it lays flat.. I know their rooms are small in japan but the ceilings aren't that low.

It fits into a laptop bag better. Portable + small = good. :)

by Mussels (July 24th - 3:33 AM) - Reply

by: wiak
severly bottlenecked becose of usb hehe :p

my housemate has a USB and E-sata blu ray cage. He cant watch movies over USB, they just wont start.

by Thefumigator (July 24th - 5:03 AM) - Reply

I have external DVD writers (actually IDE drives on external USB cases). I can play movies perfectly fine. USB is not a problem (USB 2.0 to be specific) has a theoretical rate of aprox 400mbps which translates to aprox 50Mb/s... While burning a DVD at 16X, needs like 22Mb/s and also nero ultrabuffer helps. Never had a problem in performance, at least on Nforce 730 USB controllers on my phenom-based PC. On bluray the 2x burn needs like 15Mb/s I think (for a single layer bluray). so, it seems USB is still not a bottleneck there.

I had a little accident when burning, the USB cable got loose and the burning process was interrupted and everything crashed somewhat badly... I had to restart... I also ruined the disc.

by Mussels (July 24th - 6:51 AM) - Reply

DVD is one thing. bluray is another.

Bluray needs more bandwidth, and has heavy content protection.

USB caps out at 30MB/s - its a well known fact that USB 2.0 heavily exaggerates its real speed.

by Craigleberry (July 24th - 7:00 AM) - Reply

Maybe the should have used E-sata then :p

by Wile E (July 24th - 7:04 AM) - Reply

by: Mussels
DVD is one thing. bluray is another.

Bluray needs more bandwidth, and has heavy content protection.

USB caps out at 30MB/s - its a well known fact that USB 2.0 heavily exaggerates its real speed.

BD works fine over USB. I play BD on my laptop all the time with my Lite-On external. No tricks like AnyDVD either. Just plug in the drive, and fire up Cyberlink.

30MB/s is good enough for 245760 Kb/s. No BD's are encoded (or even need to be) at that kind of bitrate. That would take up only like 29minutes on a 50GB disk. lol.

by Cheeseball (July 24th - 2:10 PM) - Reply

would take up only like 29minutes on a 50GB disk

But at sexy quality! :D

by phanbuey (July 24th - 3:30 PM) - Reply

If these were esata one could mod them to put a few inside 5.25" bays

by Mussels (July 24th - 6:40 PM) - Reply

by: Wile E
BD works fine over USB. I play BD on my laptop all the time with my Lite-On external. No tricks like AnyDVD either. Just plug in the drive, and fire up Cyberlink.

30MB/s is good enough for 245760 Kb/s. No BD's are encoded (or even need to be) at that kind of bitrate. That would take up only like 29minutes on a 50GB disk. lol.

housemates problem must be related to his cage then.

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