FirewireDirect.com Inc. on Friday announced the UltraBURN VIII Studio Series 8x DVD±R/±RW drive. It’s an external DVD burner available in either FireWire 400 or FireWire 800 configurations, compatible with both Macs and PCs.
The UltraBurn VIII sports Pioneer’s new 107 mechanism, which is billed as the world’s first 8×8 dual format writer. It can burn DVD-R and DVD-RW, +R and +RW, CD-R and CD-RW formats, and can read DVD-ROMs at up to 16x and CD-ROMs at up to 40x. It sports a 2MB memory buffer.
The drive ships with Discribe software for Mac users, which works with Mac OS 9.1 or higher (Mac OS X is required for FireWire 800 operation). FirewireDirect.com reminds users that Apple’s iDVD software only supports internal “SuperDrives,” so this product won’t work with that software.
The FireWire 800 version includes a USB 2.0 interface and retails for US$309.95. The FireWire 400 version makes USB 2.0 available as an $18 option, and costs $259.95 to start.