In House Review - LG WH10LS30 10x Blu-ray Disc Writer

[Ian]

CDRLabs kicks off the week with a review of LG's 10x Blu-ray Disc rewriter, the WH10LS30. This new Super Multi Blue drive is capable of 10x BD-R, 8x BD-R DL and 2x BD-RE writing speeds and a maximum BD-ROM read speed of 10x. The WH10LS30 is also backwards compatible with all major CD and DVD formats and includes features like HP's LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling system.


LG WH10LS30 Super Multi Blue 10x Blu-ray Disc ReWriter

[Scour]

Well, nicely review

First I was happy about the read-speed of DVD-Video, but the locked speed with AACS-BDs is a bad thing for me.

[Ian]

Well, nicely review

First I was happy about the read-speed of DVD-Video, but the locked speed with AACS-BDs is a bad thing for me.

Thanks Scour. You can get around the rip lock using MediaCodeSpeedEdit.

[Scour]

Oh, that sounds better

Still I have no BD-drive, like most ppl. I dunno what do with em because I store most of my data/movies on HDD or DVD. Maybe when HD-TV growes up I get one

[vinnie97]

^Same...haven't decided yet, though I'm in the market after my ole' Lite-On CDRW started making questionable discs (though I'm wondering if the cable is defective...haven't got around to finding a replacement IDE cable yet).

[cwy]

In your review, you didn't mention this, but were you able to run disc quality test in Nero CDDVDSpeed (now called Optidrivecontrol) on this drive? I know some drives can but most can't.

The maker of Optidrivecontrol says blu-ray drives that can run disc quality test include, but are not limited to, Lite-on, Samsung, and Sony drives that have the Mediatek chipset. I went to Videohelp.com to search for drives with Mediatek chipset, and sure enough, those drives are more expensive.

[Ian]

No, none of the LG drives support write quality testing. If you're looking for an affordable Mediatek-based BD writer, take a look at the Lite-On iHBS112. If you don't need BD writing capabilities, the BD combo drives from Lite-On and Samsung are reasonably priced too. That being said, I'm not really sure how accurate any of these drives are. There really hasn't been enough testing done to know if any of them produce semi-accurate results.

[Scour]

Is there a professional way to test BD, like CD-Cats for CD?

[Ian]

Is there a professional way to test BD, like CD-Cats for CD?

I remember seeing a few. I can't remember any specifics though.

[cwy]

No, none of the LG drives support write quality testing. If you're looking for an affordable Mediatek-based BD writer, take a look at the Lite-On iHBS112. If you don't need BD writing capabilities, the BD combo drives from Lite-On and Samsung are reasonably priced too. That being said, I'm not really sure how accurate any of these drives are. There really hasn't been enough testing done to know if any of them produce semi-accurate results.

Thanks for the info. Will you be reviewing the iHBS112? I believe it came out not long ago.

My interest in doing quality test myself was piqued when I saw this blu-ray media test report, which concluded that ALL the discs tested had subpar quality. Of course I don't believe everything I read. But one of the discs on that test was Verbatim blu-ray LTH disc ID VERBATIMw00, which happens to be what I started using a month ago. A month later, this past weekend, lo and behold, I found some of the discs burned a month ago had become occasionally unreadable. So I quickly bought another brand of HTL blu-ray discs (not tested in the above report) and hope to find a review for it, or do quality test myself, but then I found out my WH10LS30 couldn't do scanning.

[Ian]

The problem with cdrinfo's article is that they used a Lite-On DH-4O1S for testing. I have never gotten "good" results with that drive, even with brand new, pressed BD-ROM's. The error rates seem to be more accurate with the newer Samsung and Lite-On drives, but again without comparing the results with an actual test machine, we really don't know.

I'm currently working on a full review of the iHBS112. I also posted some screenshots a few weeks ago. I do have a writing quality scan somewhere to show what the results look like that I'll post later tonight.

lite-ihbs112-12x-blu-ray-disc-writer-preview-t25374.html

[Scour]

I remember seeing a few. I can't remember any specifics though.

I only wondered because c´t-magazine didn´t shown error-results in their BD-tests

[Ian]

I think its due to how new the technology is, the price and availability of the test machines and the number of companies making them, which appears to be very low. I did some searches and the only one I could find is the Datarius Databank.

[Scour]

It seems to be nobody knows how good the BD-media is. I read somewhere that BD-media isn´t very reliable, but the future will show more details