New LG Blu-ray Drives - BE06, GBC-H20L and GBW-H20L

[Ian]

LG has announced three new Blu-ray Disc drives. Along with the external BE06 (BD Combo), they have two new internal drives, the GBC-H20L (BD Combo) and GBW-H20L (BD Writer). All three feature 6 BD read speeds and in the case of the GBW-H20L, 6x BD-R and 2x BD-RE write speeds.

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stori ... 343&EDATE=

The next generation in optical storage products, models BE06, GBC-H20L and GBW-H20L provide back-up for a wide variety of files, photos, business documents, or video. Consumers will appreciate the 6x speed at which the drives write and read information, their compatibility with DVD and CDR CDRW, as well as their quick and easy data storage option.

Perfect for laptop users or those that have a multitude of PCs, LG's BE06 can be easily connected through the USB 2.0 connection and a DC power adapter. The BE06 has a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $379.95.

The GBC-H20L and the GBW-H20L are designed to satisfy consumer needs for safe and fast data backup. Boasting one of the industry's fastest read and write speed at 16x, the GBW-H20L can also handle up to 50GB of data, equivalent to around 4-1/2 hours of high-definition video or 22 hours of standard definition video (on a dual layer 50GB BD-R/BD-RE recordable media). The GBC-H20L and the GBW-H20L carry manufacturer's suggested retail prices of $199.95 and $279.95 respectively.

I haven't seen these in stores or for sale online yet, but they're supposedly shipping now.

Between this and the price cuts, I think its pretty clear that LG is phasing out its line of "Super-Multi Blue" drives. Thoughts?

[Dartman]

Well that's too bad, I still have way more HD DVD movies then I do Blu. Might be nice to be able to cross them over to BD someday. Guess I'll have to get a super multi soon and hope they don't just go up in price then disappear.
BD prices still really haven't dropped much since they won and there still are a few place selling hd dvd movies cheap online.

[Wesociety]

Well that's too bad, I still have way more HD DVD movies then I do Blu. Might be nice to be able to cross them over to BD someday.

Good luck with that... It's supposed to be quite a PITA to do, taking up quite a long amount of time to accomplish per disc.

[Dartman]

Well when the BD people stop thinking they can charge as much as they want now I might be more interested in buying a lot more movies , but 30 bucks a movie average just doesn't cut it unless it's something I REALLY like, and 20 on sale means the same, just slightly less picky.
Not that big of a deal anyways, I doubt either machine, HD-DVD or BD will explode anytime soon, just be nice to play either format on the PC, and redo those annoying one's that force you to set through 7 previews before you can watch the movie..

[Halc]

Sorry for non-LG off-topic post, but ...

I think history is repeating itself. We are in a similar phase when transitioning away from cd/cd-r to dvd/dvd+/-r.

The CD drives were good. So were the CD-R discs. Prices on both were good.

THe dvd burners were almost all crap, burn quality was horrible, almost all discs were at least partially incompatible (sans Tayo) and the prices were obnoxious.

The same situation stands now with BD.

The thing I'm worried about is that the DVD dual layer burn quality / compatibility is _still_ abysmal after all these years. I just burned four +R DL discs with four different recent dvd burners.

Only one of them is even playable and even that would be a far cry from good quality. Archival? In your dreams.

If that is the level of quality DVD can muster for dual layer burning performance after years of perfecting, I feel that the BD with much tighter aperture will not be any more easier to achieve.

As such, I don't hold much hope for decent quality BD multi-layer recording. Maybe it'll come to pass, but currently I very much doubt so. Pressed discs manufacturing is of course a different matter, although apparently not a walk in the park either.

[andersos]

I noticed the BE06 on a web shop and liked the looks of it. But is the bandwidth of USB2 enough for playback of Blu ray movie when playing for ex. PCM 5.1 soundtrack?

Here's a product pdf :

BE06LU10.pdf

LG BE06 info

(188.61 KiB) Downloaded 579 times

And it says "Super Multi Blue" on the BE06 btw.

[Ian]

USB 2.0 has more than enough bandwidth. Blu-ray movies have a maximum data transfer rate of 54 Mbit/s where USB 2.0 has a maximum transfer rate of 40MBps or 320Mbps. Given, USB 2.0 rarely, if ever, reaches those speeds, but Blu-ray playback shouldn't be a problem.