Lite-On is to knock 15 per cent off the price of its internal Blu-ray Disc writer, the LH-2B1S, in a bid to boost the popularity of the next-gen optical disc format in Europe.

Right now, the drive retails in Europe for around €649 ($895/£437), Lite-On said. But it expects that to fall €100 to €539 ($757/£370), "in the near future".

The reduction follows increasingly supply of the blue-laser diodes used in Blu-ray Disc read/write heads and which have been rather rare over the last 12 months or so. This dearth hindered not only sales of Blu-ray Disc drives, burners and players, but is one of the reasons why Sony was forced to delay the release of the PS3 from March 2006 to November of that year.

Lite-On introduced the LH-2B1S in June 2006 before bringing it to Europe the following November. It also introduced an external version of the product, the LX-2B1U.

The drive can write BD-R and BD-RE media at 2x speeds, the current standard, and can burn both single-layer (25GB) and dual-layer (50GB) discs. It also writes CD and DVD media.

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