It hasn't been that long ago that the first Blu-ray optical drives were landing for computers. I remember the first one I read about was in the thousand-dollar range. Technology has changed drastically since the drives were first unveiled and today you can get a handful of Blu-ray drives for the price of one of the early offerings.

Pioneer has announced a new optical drive that is an internal 5.25" optical drive that is designed to read and write to discs using the new higher-capacity BDXL format. The optical drive can also write to normal Blu-ray media, DVD, and CDs as well. The new BDXL discs are capable of storing 128GB of data on a BDR-QL disc and up to 100GB on a BD-R TL disc. The optical drive uses the SATA interface.

The drive ships with as single BD-R XL 100GB disc and has tech to protect disc and improve playback quality on recorded media. The tech includes Limit Equalizer to improve RF signals generated when reading Blu-ray discs. Disc Vibration Stabilizer protects discs from warping during the write process. The BDR-206MBK is available right now for $199.