Sony has now announced its first Blu-ray unit for stationary PCs during an event in Sidney, Austalia. Sony BWU-100A is as we’ve earlier reported a Blu-ray burner that uses the PATA interface and for a price of about $750 you would expect a quite broad functionality. That does not seem to be the case as the unit, according to Sony, not even will be able to play commercial Blu-ray movies. To be honest the limitation is not with BWU-100A itself and its the hardware, but the platform around the player.
It is the non-existent support for HDCP with today’s computers and even the lack of software to play the BD movies. So far there are no computers with graphics cards sporting HDCP being sold and the only software for HDCP and BD playback is InterVideo’s WinDVD BD, which is only an OEM software delivered with Sony’s VAIO VGN-AR18GP laptops.
Sony says it hopes to find ways to work around these limitations soon. But those who wants to invest in its BD burner soon the unit will only work for personal storage of data.
