Asus produces the worlds first slim external Blu Ray drive and we get our hands on it to take a good look at this rather sexy looking bit of kit.

Check it out

Outrageous !

Have to be fair, they're taking quite a micky on the pricing of this unit. Whilst I can understand the styling and that it's probably aimed at those who either have a laptop/netbook without, or media center that's currently dvd only, - look stylish - but even so £150.

I'd have to look at a BR-ROM/DVDRW being in the region of £50 and a caddie/adapter being £20?? ish max/min. It's £80 or so worth of style, and as u say, probably lacking in the bundle department - although it'd probably be contract based. But having said that, there are some awesome BBC documentaries, atleast, that would show-off the capabilities. Other than that, if it was a BR-RAM.. it would turn it into an awesome piece of kit.

I look at the construction and I'm thinking a laptop drive in a fancy caddie.

I don't know that an audio connector would work in same way either. For a pc, many of them have atleast coax inputs, I know not many laptops do.

I dunno, good reviewage, but it's a big spend for not so much imo. Could be so much better for the same price I feel.

Not sure what you mean about audio connector matey? Using the drive as a laptop addition you'd only be benefitting from the HD video and have to sacrifice the audio imo

If you look at laptop Blu Ray drives, the cheapest around is £120ish I believe (linky), so that ups the price somewhat. However, I do agree (and it's reflected in the conclusion), that the price is too much. Around £100 would most likely be a fairer price for a stylish 'lifestyle' device that plays Blu Ray.

I was thinking about something as simple as a pin pass-thru for the hd audio pins u get on bare units. Pins to a phono socket or something. Could just be a jack, and supply u with a jack->phono lead.

Bit confusing perhaps cos the player I was thinking of for £50 or so is like a pioneer regular pc one, not a laptop one. But that's taking all the looks out of the equation and just being practical I guess.

Laptop ones are still quite expensive, so u can see their expense in that department, and keeping in with their slim design, only a laptop one would suffice.

Soz mate you've lost me. Currently the only thing that passes HD audio (bitstream) is an HDMI socket or the dual USB interface on this drive.

An AV receiver can decode HD audio and send it out via an analogue connection (RCA out), but the HD audio has to be decoded by the Amp first and usually this is used to pass to a power Amp in a Pre-Power Amp situation with high end audio to power high end audiophile speakers. A PS3 or Blu Ray player (or one of these link link two cards) can decode HD audio then pass 6 channels (5.1), out using uncompressed linear PCM via Digital Optical or Digital Coaxial.

Yeah on that drive, but the units essentially have the ability (although not wired up in most cases) to have the pins available ala the drive I got:

http://img.directcanada.com/images/P...DC-202BK_1.jpg

With these, similar to oldfashioned ide drives and their audio outputs, u can tap into these sources to channel a socket that a user can use for a decoder or whatever.

Generally, units since the adoption of SATA, have not put the headers for these onto the pcb and u'll just get a SATA & Power ports. Even tho the solder points are there.

As I mentioned tho, this would be an alternative build as ASUS have gone down the latop-in-a-caddie approach.

And the sound output wouldn't be high def either as the bandwidth of those ports isn't the required 24.5Mb/sec afaik (correct me if I'm wrong)

U know, I don't know the bandwidth.

But legend has it, u connect the pins to ur gfxcard to get hd audio through the hdmi output.

Except that graphics cards can't bitstream HD audio afaik.

HD audio on graphics cards has been around, or atleast promoted, since '08 some time. Never reviewed, never tested, never scrutinized.

Believe ATI cards came along with it first as a pass-thru, whereas nVidia stuck it on their cards, made it look like a fan header, and said nothing.

U go online to get any help about it.... mid '08 or so and there'd be nothing.

Just googling now and there are threads about it on the AV forums, even suggestions - how time has changed.

Deal being, I think this needs some study myself. No one has done anything worth linking about. Normally it's just stated that the cards have it and move along quickly to how fast this htpc gpu plays Crysis.

Yeah agreed with you mate, never got any detail from ATI or Nvidia on it really and it would only work on HDMI enabled cards.

Looks damn good but £150!

Asus think the street price is going to be lower than £150, but it will have to come down a lot below that!

What were you expecting? It seems reasonable to me for the quality they're providing.