Japanese Buffalo announced the release of the first HD DVD ROM drive for PCs, offering playback of double-layer 30GB HD DVD video movies.

Dubbed "HDV-ROM2.4FB", the ATAPI drive will retail in the Japanese market late December at a suggested retail price of 37,000 Yen ($322).

The drive is based on the Toshiba SD-H802A HD DVD ROM drive, and it is capable of reproducing both single layer (15GB) and double layer (30GB) HD DVD-ROM media at 2.4x (CLV, 10708.8 KB/s). Other specifications include reading of DVD-ROM and DVD±R (SL and DL) as well as DVD±RW media at 5x. As for the CD-ROM, CD-R and CD-RW formats, the Buffalo drive supports reading at a speed of 15x maximum.

Buffalo HDV-ROM2.4FB is one of the first HD DVD ROM drives for the computer market that have been publicly introduced, in addition to NEC's HR-1100A, which was announced in September, 2005, but which never showed up on the market any widely. HP has also announced its first external HD DVD-ROM drive (hd100), which is expected to retail for around $770 later this year.

source: 'CDRInfo'