As was the case with CD and DVD drives, the first, minimum speed of players and disc drives will be 1X. The Blu-ray spec puts this at 36Mbps. It usually takes a few months or so before 2X drives hit, then a little more time for 4X and so forth. Because of this usual timeline, it was generally assumed that the PlayStation 3 would be using a 1X drive, with an outside chance at 2X.

Today we received a nifty bit of info from Josh Peterson, Director of Strategic Alliances, Optical Storage Solutions, Hewlett-Packard Company. That's a long and somewhat confusing title, but trust us that he knows his stuff about Blu-ray. He had this to say about the Blu-ray format in general:

The read speed of Blu-ray is something that drive manufacturer's specify, and it will vary from vendor to vendor. The only thing specified by the BD spec is what the "1X" speed is, which is 36Mbps in the case of Blu-ray Disc. We know that some of the first generation BD drives will be "2X" for Blu-ray Disc Data Reading which is 72Mbps.

As 2X drives will be available at the launch of the format, roughly November or so, this bodes well for the PlayStation 3 hitting at least that speed, cutting its assumed load times in half. With 2X drives being available so early, this also gives hope that the PS3 could employ a 4X Blu-ray drive, drastically cutting load times even more.

Of course, to keep costs down (which Sony doesn't seem to care about, at least from an outside perspective) it could ship with a 1X drive. Sony still has yet to announce an official read speed for its drive, but we'll keep you posted as soon as more info is available.

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