With HD DVD out, manufacturers are free to release Blu-ray products without fear of the format dying. It still could and probably will, but that’s neither here nor there. Philips & Lite-on Digital Solutions will be the first to bring a stand alone Blu-ray disc drive to the PC/laptop market with the Lite-On DX-DX-4O1S in Q2. The drive will read Blu-ray discs at 4x, single-layer DVDs at 12x, dual-layer at 8x and CDs at 32x. No word on price or street date for the USB drive.

“Due to recent market developments we can expect an increasing volume of movies to be released in high definition on Blu-ray Discs,” said Jelmer Veldman, European Marketing Manager at PLDS. “The market adoption of Blu-ray as the optical disc standard for High Definition content results in a growing demand for Blu-ray playback solutions. The portable external Lite-On BD-ROM drive allows users to playback their Blu-ray discs on any PC via a USB 2.0 cable.”

Lite-On, Philips Introduce First External Blu-ray Disc Drive [Daily Tech]