I remember when Blu-ray drives for computers first starting coming to the market. The internal drives were over $1000 to purchase making them far too expensive for most of the people interested in them to afford. Thankfully, as things happen in the technology industry, prices have dropped significantly today.

Pioneer has announced a new Blu-ray writer called the BDR-2203 that can burn dual-layer Blu-ray discs at 8x speeds. The best part is that the internal optical drive retails for $249.99, about a quarter of what Blu-ray drives sold for not so long ago.

Optical drives are changing with constantly evolving speeds and features. Blu-ray drives for PCs are coming down in price and gaining features as well. One of the things that is important to computer users, especially those using notebooks is power consumption. Plextor has announced a new line of optical drives with internal and external USB models that uses new control software giving control over power use and more.

The line of drives includes the PX-601U, PX-B310SA, PX-B310U, PX-850SA, and PX-850A. The 610U is a small external DVD super multi drive that draws all of its power from the USB port. The B310SA is an internal SATA Blu-ray combo drive that reads Blu-ray discs and burns CD/DVD media. The B310U is the USB external version of the drive.

In the keynote speech yesterday at MacWorld Jobs brushed over the MacBook Air SuperDrive fairly quickly giving the message that the need for optical drives are becoming less, especially since the new MacBook Air has no internal optical drive. According to Apple it can download what software it needs through the internet and connect wirelessly to the Time Capsule for backing up and storing data. Apple does know that the end of optical drives is still a ways off and created this MacBook Air SuperDrive as an external optical drive accessory to the MacBook Air, and ONLY for the MacBook Air according to the specs.

It connects and is powered through a single standard USB cable that’s built into the drive so the MacBook Air will power the SuperDrive both when plugged in and when on batteries. The slot-loading SuperDrive is not much bigger than a CD case at 5.47 x 5.47 x 0.67 inches, and weighs 1.09 pounds. It also has some decent speeds with writing CD-Rs at 24x and double-layer DVDs at 4x.

Samsung unveiled today what it is calling the world’s fastest DVD burner. The new Samsung Super-WriteMaster SH-S203N is priced at around $80.

The Samsung Super-WriteMaster SH-S203N is an internal DVD burner which offers up 16x dual layer recording and LightScribe technology, which lets you imprint a label or design on the disc. This 20x SATA drive supports all CD/DVD discs, according to Samsung, including DVD-RAM. The company also states this burner offers “a 30-40 percent improvement recording time” compared to other dual layer devices.

Sony unveiled today a second generation internal Blu-ray Disc drive which cuts down the amount of time it takes to burn a BD-R disc. The new BWU-200S, available as an aftermarket item for computer users, is priced at around $600.

The Sony BWU-200S is capable of 4X BD-R, which Sony says results in burning time to this Blu-Ray Disc format being cut by half. It also offers 16X DVD+R recording speeds. All in all, Sony has designed this drive to “record up to 50GB of data for random access storage and backup on BD-R (write once) or BD-RE (rewritable) discs, or up to 230 minutes of high-definition HDV 1080i video on a BD-R/RE 50GB disc. It also supports recording on standard single layer 4.7GB DVD+R/+RW/RAM discs, 8.5GB DVD+R double/dual layer discs, and CDs.”