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	The model number “05” has a special meaning to all of us who are involved. It derives from DVR-A05J, the DVD drive that prominently contributed to the market expansion in the earliest days of DVD writers. Numerous techniques were developed with DVR-A05J that laid down the foundation for subsequent drives. The spirit of innovation and high-quality writing technology is passed on through the generations of our DVD drives. BDR-205, the world’s first blu-ray disk (BD) drive to offer 12x recording, was created and completed through the devoted efforts of all of the development team members who shared the desire to materialize a product that carried with it the spirit of “05.”
	BDR-203 attained a recording speed of 8x, so the next model number is normally “204” with a speed of 10x, but we skipped that and targeted “12x” as our next goal. As a matter of course, we cannot compromise at all with our other long-standing objective of providing stable, high-quality recording even with a speed as high as 12x. We were also driven by the aspiration to impact following BD drives by being the first in the industry to realize high-quality 12x writing, leading the BD format technologies in the promotion of their popularization. Furthermore, we also pursued high-quality 12x writing with dual-layer disks, as a step toward realizing the multi-layer high volume data recoding that we expect to see in the future. The idea we had for the new drive demanded a significant reduction of recording time when writing large amounts of data at a time, such as when archiving large volume data, which is becoming increasingly common. The technologies for stable, high-quality 12x recording are also incorporated into lower speed recording, so that the same level of writing performance is ensured at all speeds.
	A blu-ray disk (BD) is a polycarbonate disk, 12 centimeters in diameter with a center hole, a size inherited from CD audio disks. While the shared mechanical properties of CDs, DVDs, and BDs allow for easy compatibility, the restrictions relating to the disk structure are also inherited. Rotating at too high a speed can cause small cracks and scratches on disks to grow rapidly due to centrifugal force and vibration. This creates a risk of the disk suddenly shattering, and therefore, for safety reasons, the upper limit of speed is around 10,000 revolutions per minute. In the case of BD, the 10,000 revolutions per minute matches the speed of 12x, so it is the practical top speed for some time to come. Pioneer's drives are furnished with a number of protective mechanisms that ensure the users’ safety, such as keeping the disk pieces contained even if by any chance a disk revolving at high speeds breaks. Unfortunately, this concern for safety is not necessarily a standard among the manufacturers---in fact, some brands have no safety measures in place at all.
	The higher the revolutions per minute, the larger the vibration and whirring (‘wind’ noise) caused by the spinning disk becomes. High speeds also generate more heat, so cooling performance must also be improved. However, if we raised the cooling performance, the whirring sound tends to get louder. To summarize, the requirements were to improve quietness, which has been favored by many customers, while ensuring sufficient cooling performance---to create a quiet 12x drive that can stably record data. Even with such conflicting specification demands, we managed to create a quiet drive with fast recording functions. To be specific, we set targets using computer simulation and repeated experiments with the cut-and-try method. During this course of development, the large-scale anechoic chamber in the Kawasaki Office helped a great deal. The anechoic chamber is a room that is completely insulated from noise and that minimizes reflections of sound. Special sound-absorbent and carefully shaped materials extend across the chamber, vertically and horizontally, and by placing the drive in midair at the heart of the room and measuring the sound produced, we can capture the actual sound of the drive. Kawasaki Office has a large anechoic chamber that has also been used in the development of the TAD series, a professional use speaker system that is used in studios worldwide. Most of its other anechoic chambers accommodate maybe one person, but this particular one has enough space to hold a meeting. Therefore, developers can frequently repeat cut-and-try procedures while listening to the sound in the anechoic chamber, which provides for a more efficient way to zero in on the silent design. In actual development, the development team members repeat the cut-and-try procedure, and when they get a sense of what they want to aim for, all people involved, including the marketing team, gather in the anechoic chamber to actually listen to the operating sounds and discuss the particulars.
	Our development team for BDR-205 consists of people who by nature can never be satisfied with half-hearted considerations and never be happy with the second best. Such persistent members have given all they can to realize the highest quality product and be on time. In addition to the Windows 7 support, we embedded BDR-205 with the latest available functions such as the optimal strategy prediction algorithm that enables 4x recording even with unregistered blu-ray disks. We believe that we were able to deliver the best drive on the market at the time. We hope you like the BDR-205 and look forward to our future drives.