LG Blu Ray Review

It is probably fair to say that the brand name of LG is more popular in Asia than any other parts of the globe. They had their hands busy in recent times, from production of LCD TVs to mobile phones, laptops and of course optical drives such as the new HD DVD - Blu-ray combo drive.

Although their customer service is sub par from personal experiences, let's take a look at this new GGW-H20L blu-ray drive. There is a good reason for this. It is currently the cheapest and fastest (4x) Blu-ray rewritable combo drive available retailing at SGD $488 compared to Sony's model at SGD $699. It is worth taking a look.

Let's take a look at some specs:

• Read Speed

• DVD-ROM (SL/DL): 16x/8x CAV
• DVD-RAM: 5x PCAV
• DVD+/-R: 12x/8x CAV
• DVD+/-RW: 10x CAV
• DVD-Video (SL/DL): 8x CAV
• CD-R/RW/ROM: 40x CAV
• BD-ROM (SL/DL): 6x/4.8x CAV
• BD-R (DL): 6x/4.8x CAV
• BD-RE (SL/DL): 2x/2x CLV
• BD MV: 4.8x CAV
• HD DVD-ROM (SL/DL): 3x/3x CAV
• HD DVD Video: 3x CAV

• Write Speed

• BD-R: 6x CAV
• BD-R (DL): 4x CLV
• BD-RE (SL/DL): 2x CLV
• BD-R (SL LTH): 2x CLV
• DVD-R: 16x PCAV
• DVD-R DL: 4x CLV
• DVD-RW: 6x CLV
• DVD-RAM: 5x PCAV
• DVD+R: 16x PCAV
• DVD+R DL: 4x CLV
• DVD+RW: 8x ZCLV
• CD-R: 40x PCAV
• CD-RW: 24x ZCLV

• Access Time:

• BD-ROM: 180ms
• HD DVD-ROM: 210ms
• DVD: 160ms
• DVD-RAM: 180ms
• CD: 150ms

Measuring at 146 x 41.3 x 185mm and weighing in at 870g, it is pretty much a standard sized optical drive. It uses a SATA interface with a 4MB buffer cache. This new drive is really a complete hybrid drive that even includes lightscribe technology for you to burn images on your home video discs for instance. It also comes with the usual manual, SATA cable and everything you need to get a simple installation going.

Blu-ray technology is still at its teething stage at the moment. Sure, there are more movies coming out in blu-ray formats, but drive speeds are still not astronomical at the moment, coupled by the expensive costs of blu-ray writable discs. If you want to watch your movies in your living room, you will also need a blu-ray capable player. In my opinion, unless you really have to have the technology now, it is best to adopt and wait and see attitude for the drives and media technology to become more mainstream, and for the costs to drop further.