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Quad-Interface Blu-Ray Burner Surfaces at 12x Speed

Pulkit Chandna — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:35:55 -0600

OWC has introduced a quad-interface Blu-ray burner that uses a Pioneer BDR-205. You will never be short of options with the Mercury Pro 12x Blu-ray burner as it supports four different interfaces: FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0 and eSATA. It ships with a cable each four all the interfaces that it supports. It is capable of writing to BD-R media ( single or double layer) at 12x speed, BD-RE media at 2x speed, DVD±R at 16X, DVD±R DL at 8X, and CD-R at 40X. The Mercury Pro 12x Blu-ray burner can be yours for $350. The burner is also available along with Roxio's Toast 10 Titanium Pro for $450, though the bundle is only meant for Mac users.

Image Credit: OCW

New Blu-ray Laser From Sharp Could Pave the way for 100GB BD-R Disks

Justin Kerr — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 14:22:52 -0500

Recordable Blu-ray media has been expensive, and slow to catch on, but would a bump to 100GB capacities change your mind? New developments made by Sharp could do just that by introducing a blue-violet laser which is able to read triple-layer or even quad-layer Blu-ray disks. Current BD-R single layer disks hold a mere 25GB.

The light put out by the beam is much stronger than traditional readers at 500mW, and it is made possible thanks to an aluminum oxynitride layer that is located squarely between the laser’s crystal and dielectric film which is meant to protect the laser.

In addition to capacity increases, this could also allow for writing speeds of up to 8x across all four layers, making it a much more interesting archiving option for digital packrats. Prices and availability still haven’t been announced yet, but the company describes the technology as “production ready”. At the very least it would be nice to see a new affordable disk option come along to replace those aging 4.7GB DVD’s, which frankly, just don’t cut it size wise anymore.

Are you itching for new recordable disks, or is flash the future of the sneaker net?

LG BE06 External Blu-Ray Burner

Katherine Stevenson — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:00:00 -0500

We expected LG’s new 6x external Blu-ray burner to perform similarly to the company’s GBW-H20L internal offering, what with the two having identical read/write speed ratings, but we were wrong. The external drive is a bigger, more expensive letdown.

Like the GBW-H20L, the BE06 external model boasts an industry-leading 6x BD-R write rating. And here the latter performed accordingly, writing 22GB of data to a single-layer BD-R disc in a brisk 22:43 (min:sec). In BD-RE writes, however, the BE06 faltered—badly. Boasting the same 2x rating for rewriteable media as the GBW-H20L, the BE06 took more than twice as long as that drive to write 22GB of data to a BD-RE disc—a full hour and 28 minutes! That’s actually slower than just about any Blu-ray burner we’ve tested in recent memory. Not good.

The BE06 redeemed itself with DVD-R writes. The drive is rated at 16x and was able to write 4.38GB to a single-layer disc in 5:42—a second faster than the LG GBW-H20L. The drives were as closely matched on DVD-R reads.

While there’s something to be said for the convenience of an external drive with a USB 2.0 interface, this is offset by the BE06’s gargantuan size. The enclosure is nearly 3 inches longer and an inch wider than its internal brethren—and $100 more expensive. Blu-ray is a tough enough sell as it is without tacking on this drive’s compromises. We’re unimpressed.

LG GBW-H20L

Katherine Stevenson — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:00:00 -0500

When we reviewed LG’s GGW-H20L Blu-ray burner in December 2007 we applauded its superior BD-R write speeds and ability to also read HD DVD media. Now that the latter feature is irrelevant, we welcome LG’s new GBW-H20L. It boasts all the same DVD and BD read and write specs as its predecessor, sans the HD DVD reader—and comes with a healthy price cut.

LG makes next-gen optical seem like a viable option.

LG remains the only manufacturer offering 6x write speeds for BD-R media, and it’s a notable distinction. Even when burning to 2x media, LG’s drives are far speedier than the 4x competition at filling a BD-R disc with 22.5GB of data—taking just over 20 minutes (the 4x Lite On drive we reviewed last month took 48 minutes to complete that task!).

LG’s BD burner offers a 16x DVD+R write rating. While it’s shy of the 20x rating you’ll find on top-end dedicated DVD drives, we’re satisfied with the real-world results. When writing 4.38GB of data to a singled-layer DVD+R disc, LG’s GBW-H20L took 5:43 (min:sec), compared with the Lab record time of 5:00 set by Samsung’s SH-S203 DVD drive. Most Blu-ray burners we’ve reviewed have capped DVD+R speeds at 8x or 12x, including the Lite On drive reviewed last month, which took 7:09 to fill a single-layer DVD.

While LG’s previous GGW-H20L wins the majority of our benchmarks, the GBW-H20L comes well within spitting distance of that drive. And at $280, the GBW-H20L is almost $200 less than its predecessor. We like that.

Lite On 4x Blu-ray Triple Writer DH-4B1S

Katherine Stevenson — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:26:27 -0500

Lite On’s new drive may sport a faster 4x BD-R write rating, but it performs worse than its 2x kin.

It doesn’t matter a lick to us that Blu-ray has prevailed in the high-def format war if the hardware remains expensive and uninspiring. We have to admit, we thought the tide was turning when we reviewed LG’s GGW-H20L Blu-ray burner back in December. That drive represented a dramatic price drop (falling to $500 from its predecessor’s $1,200 price tag in a matter of months—and now settled at $400 MSRP), and its 6x rating for BD-R media resulted in burn times we could actually live with (22.5GB in a little over 20 minutes).

Sadly, Lite On has not followed LG’s lead. True, the company’s latest Blu-ray burner is cheaper than the Lite On LH-2B1S we reviewed in July 2007 ($450 vs. $600) and has a faster BD-R write rating (4x vs. 2x), but we’re not the least bit moved by these changes. For starters, the new DH-4B1S is still more expensive than the aforementioned LG GGW-H20L, and its “improved” BD-R rating has actually made burning to that media slower! It took us 48:00 (min:sec) to burn 22.5GB to a single-layer disc. Certain this was a mistake, we ran the test again—for a time of 48:14! (With the 2x Lite On drive, this very task took just 46:14.) The DH-4B1S was actually faster burning to BD-RE media—where it’s rated at just 2x—writing 22.5GB to a rewriteable disc in 46:12.

With such pathetic Blu-ray performance, it might seem moot to discuss the DH-4B1S’s other attributes, such as DVD burn times, but here you have it: The drive is rated at 12x for DVD+R single-layer discs; in our tests, it wrote 4.38GB of data to that media in 7:09 (min:sec). That’s a decent time, but LG’s GGW-H20L, which is rated at 16x, took just 5:40 to complete this task.

Like all the Blu-ray burners we’ve ever tested, the DH-4B1S comes bundled with a collection of CyberLink applications for backup, copying, playback, and authoring chores. We can’t hold the drive responsible, but we’d appreciate CyberLink’s software more if it weren’t so twitchy.

Aesthetically, the drive is pretty standard, although it does sport an LED strip across its front that signifies drive operation and whether it’s working with CD, DVD, or BD media. The DH-4B1S smartly sports a SATA interface.

We always expect technology to progress by leaps and bounds, but a drive such as this makes us feel like Blu-ray is at a standstill.

Sony BWU-200S

Katherine Stevenson — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:23:19 -0600

As far as we’re concerned, the Blu-ray burner to beat these days is LG’s GGW-H20L1 (reviewed December 2007). Unfortunately for Sony, its BWU-200S isn’t the drive to do it. We pretty much knew this before we even began testing the drive—after all, the BWU-200S is rated for 4x Blu-ray write speeds compared to the LG’s 6x speed rating.

And true to form, LG’s drive trounced Sony’s in every Blu-ray burning scenario. What surprised us was how much slower the BWU-200S was compared to even its 2x predecessor, the BWU-100A that we reviewed in April 2007. Using the latest version of Nero CD-DVD Speed to test burn times, as we always do, the BWU-200S took a glacially slow 99:47 (min:sec) to fill a single-layer BD-R disc. That’s almost an hour and 40 minutes to write 22.5GB of data! Its 2x forebearer took less than half that time. Repeated tests with rewriteable and double-layer Blu-ray media produced similarly abysmal results. What gives?

A call to Sony provided the answer. By default, the BWU-200S’s defect-management routine is enabled for Blu-ray media. So every block of data written to a BD disc is simultaneously checked for errors, doubling burn times. The feature can be disabled, but only in the bundled Power2Go burning app—part of the CyberLink suite that is included with the drive. Once we did that, the BWU-200S’s burn times were more reasonable—45:38 to fill a single-layer BD-R, 45:17 to fill a single-layer rewriteable disc, and 91:13 for double-layer media—but these times still aren’t as good as those of other 4x drives we’ve tested (and we haven’t tested any other drive that performed better with BD-RE than BD-R!). The most impressive result came from burning 45.2GB of data to Sony’s prerelease 4x BD-R DL media. Burn times were literally cut in half when compared to burning to a 2x disc. We’re looking forward to using the faster media with a really good drive, like LG’s GGW-H20L1.