One of the hot topics in 2007 was the war between HD DVD and Blu-ray discs, each format with its supporters, from media companies to hardware producers. I don't know if it was really about technology, or simply about "mine is better", but Plextor just released something that should have been around already - the first hybrid optical drives!

The new drives are the PX-B300SA combo, and the PX-B920SA burner. The first one has BD and HD DVD support, and the Blu-ray writer is also capable of handling HD DVD discs, but only has read support for this type of media. Obviously, both drives come with full CD and DVD support, and they are expected to replace the PX-B900A, Plextor's Blu-ray burner announced earlier this year.

Read and write speeds are nothing out of ordinary, and both drives also come with full LightScribe capabilities. The new hybrid drives use the SATA interface, and pricing wasn't revealed yet.

I don't know about others, but for me, this is the future. After all, nobody has to actually win the "formats war" because, for end-users, drives capable of reading and burning all formats available(or at least CD/DVD read/write, and Blu-ray & HD DVD read, like the PX-B300SA combo above), especially if they are wisely priced, are the best choice.

 Apparently the HD-DVD has lost the "battle" against the Blu-ray standard. Many of the movie production studios from Hollywood have chosed Blu-ray as an exclusive movie distribution method. The Blu-ray ROM units have been available for a while already on the market and recently even the blu-ray burners have gained popularity due to the increased storage capacity (up to 5 times more than a regular DVD). Philips has launched the SPD7000BD Blu-ray DVD Burner some time ago and it has pleased a lot of customers so far. It supports Blu-ray HD videos reading, but it requires a HDCP video card and monitor. The DVD and CD-ROM access time is the same, 150ms and the cache is 8mb. However it is just one of the first Blu-ray Burner models, and it is not so advanced in its functions yet: the write-speed of a BD-R media is 2X maximum, the ReWrite-speed for BD-RE is 2X maximum and the access time for the entire Blu-ray discs is 350ms. Overall, the price isn't really justified, about $440, unless the customer will buy it and use it intensively within an environment where storing large amounts of data (like more than 10-20GB at once) is done very often.