US peripherals specialist Other World Computing (OWC) today touted what it claims is the world's first external Blu-ray Disc burners with two species of Firewire port - 400 and 800 - plus USB and eSata interfaces.

The Mercury Pro incorporates a 4x Blu-ray writer that can handle both single- and dual-layer media in both recordable (BD-R) and rewriteable (BD-RE) forms. It'll also read and write all the various DVD and CD formats, and read HD DVDs.

An obvious offering for Mac users fed up of waiting for Apple to build Blu-ray into its machines, the OWC drive is also aimed at Windows users.

They'll favour the cheaper bundle, which packs a pair of 25GB BD-Rs in with the drive. It costs $500, while a pricier package which bundles Mac OS X disc burning tool Toast Titanium and some blank discs retails for $580. Both models come complete with cables.

The drives are available immediately from OWC's website.