LG debuts trio of Blu-ray drives
updated 01:45 pm EDT, Tue June 3, 2008
New LG Blu-ray drives
Electronics monolith LG says it has released three new Blu-ray drives (not pictured): the BE06, GBC-H20L, and GBW-H20L. The first of these is an external drive, connected through a USB 2.0 port and a DC power adapter. It is said to be compatible with "all" Blu-ray, CD and DVD formats, but can only burn the latter two, up to 16x speeds when handling DVD+RW/-RW. BD-R discs can be read at 6x speed, while BD-RE media is streamed at 2x. The drive costs $380.
The GBC- and GBW-H20L drives are internal models, with the latter adding Blu-ray burning; it has a read/write capacity of 6x for BD-R discs, and 2x for BD-RE. A 16x speed is retained for DVD+RW/-RW in both models. Prices are listed at $200 and $280, respectively.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: May 2005
Prices rapidly dropping!
Looks like we will soon be burning Blu-Ray the way we've been burning DVD's five years ago (or CDs twelve years ago). My first CD-R burner cost me $400. My first internal DVD-R burner was around $300. Looks like my first Blu-Ray will continue the trend and I'll probably pay $200 for it.
First blank CD-Rs (bulk of ten) cost me about $3 each; with blank DVDs, I waited until they were down to $2 each before I started buying. Again, looks like blank Blu-Ray discs will soon be coming down rapidly.
All we need is iBD (successor to iDVD), or similar simple blu-ray authoring tool and we'll be set for HD.