It seems now only those into Blu-ray discs and devices manufacturing are producing the first external Blu-ray drive. This is probably due to they have just won the HD/DVD and Blu-ray format war and now their position in the market is certain. The first external Blu-ray drive is produced by PLDS or Philips and Lite-On Digital Solutions. The drive is a USB connected (USB 2.0) BD-ROM drive that is capable of reading Blu-ray disc media at 4x, single layer DVD at 12x, dual-layer at 8x and CD at 32x maximum.
According to Gizmowatch, the external Blu-ray drive can only play user-recorded high-def content from a digital camcorder, but not commercial movies released under the Blu-ray Drive format. This is due to the copy protection issues and lagging software development. One reason is due to commercial content is encrypted with High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) which can be decrypted using a HDCP-compliant graphics card that offers DVI or HDMI connections. And currently in the market, PCs with graphics chips that support HDCP are not available yet, so making it impossible to play the commercial content. Another reason is the Blu-ray disc playback software that can decrypt HDCP isn’t declared as saleable item yet.
Anyway, there is no word on the price and when it hits the street for this first external USB Blu-rayd drive.
This seems like a good new technology. I don’t know if I would ever purchase this because of how long bluray could last. If digital media is able to increase the quality of videos, then bluray will not be aroudn for too long.