Pioneer to offer download-and-burn drives

Internal units ship this month; external in November

By Jennifer Netherby -- Video Business, 10/14/2008

OCT. 14 | Pioneer Electronics (USA) today became the second electronics company making DVD drives that allow consumers to burn movie downloads to disc for playback on any DVD player.

Pioneer will begin shipping its first drive, the internal DVR-2920Q DVD/CD writer, this month with a suggested retail price of $69.99, followed by the external DVR-X162Q in November with a SRP of $114.99.

Both include Sonic Solution’s Qflix DVD Download and Burn technology, co-developed by Pioneer to burn movies using CSS copy protection, the same copy protection used on commercial DVDs. Companies have been unable until recently to offer DVD burning with CSS protection because it had to be approved by DVD governing board the DVD Copy Control Assn.

Pioneer follows Dell Computer, which began selling $120 add-on Qflix drives for its computers last month.

CinemaNow announced at the time that a selection of 100 or so movies would be available for download to burn, with more to be added in the coming months.

“Consumer adoption of digitally distributed entertainment will happen at a far greater rate than the extinction of the DVD player," Sonic executive VP of strategy Mark Ely predicted in a statement announcing the Pioneer drives. "Qflix is an important and necessary bridging technology that allows content owners to deliver a more flexible product that combines the convenience of digital distribution with the permanency and portability of the DVD."

The Pioneer drives include Sonic’s Roxio Venue software for managing and burning content and the Roxio CinePlayer for PC playback.