DVD burners with Serial ATA interfaces slowly began appearing on the market late last year, and now a good number of models are available—the Lite-On LH-20A1L-06, the Pioneer DVR-212D, the Samsung SH-S183L, and the Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7170S-0B, just to name a few. The folks at DigiTimes now reckon that Serial ATA optical disc drives have a good shot at overtaking "parallel ATA" (ATAPI) models in terms of shipments in the second half of this year.
DigiTimes quotes Taiwanese optical drive makers as saying that the increasing adoption of SATA optical drives by PC vendors like Dell and HP is a major factor. Using SATA over ATAPI reportedly doesn't increase cost by a significant amount, the drive makers explain, and many PC vendors have reportedly requested SATA drives instead of ATAPI models over the past four months. DigiTimes says things might be slightly different in the enthusiast market because retail SATA optical drives are still pricier than their ATAPI counterparts—often by 20% to 30% the site claims.
