Pioneer have announced a Blu-ray drive for the desktop PC market today which is stamped with only a $299RRP. Don't get too excited though folks, she's just a BD-ROM (read only memory) drive. Unfortunately Blu-ray burners will continue to be very pricey for a good while yet.

This new BDC-2202 drive from Pioneer will however burn conventional DVDs and CDs as well as being able to playback high-def Blu-ray movie titles.

For further information, have a read of this article over at XBit.

The Pioneer BDC-2202 drive can playback, read, record and re-write DVDs (12x speed for DVD±R, 6x for DVD±RW, 4x for DVD±R DL) as well as playback, read and record single- and dual-layer Blu-ray discs (5x for BD-ROM and BD-R/-RE, 2x for BD-R DL/-RE DL), it also can playback and record CDs. It is unclear whether the new drive is meant for outdated Parallel ATA or contemporary Serial ATA interface. In order to playback high definition movies from Blu-ray discs, end-users will also need a graphics card and an output device (monitor, TV-set, etc.) that support HDCP copyright protection technology.