Blu-Ray burner - LG GGW-H20L

[David Bird]

I've bought a NEW TOY on ebay - LG GGW-H20L Blu-ray Rewriter/HD DVD-Rom Combo. I've bought 10 BD-R and 5 BD-R DL which are a BIT cheaper on ebay than they are at Dick Smith or Officeworks.

I've also bought the HD-DVD Stardust and Blu-Ray Die another Day to 'test' the player, any know a cheap source for Blu-Ray DVDs because they arn't that cheap even on ebay.

Any one had much to do with Blu-Ray authoring or converting MKS to Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray to MKS?


Review: LG GGW-H20L



Blu-ray/DVD writer & HD-DVD reader
* Play Blu-ray/HD-DVD movies on your PC!
* Supports Windows XP, Vista & Media Center
* Reads BD-ROM (Single Layer, Dual Layer), BD-RE (Single Layer), BD-R (Single Layer)
* Reads DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, CD-R, CD-RW
* Writes BD-R, BD-RE, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-R DL, DVD+R DL, DVD-RAM
* Reads CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW
* Writes CD-R, CD-RW
* SATA interface
* LightScribe

6x BD-R Write/Read Speed
3x HD DVD Read Speed
16x DVD Write Speed
BD-R/RE SL/25GB and DL/50GB

Blu-ray writers have been available for over a year now, but when we looked at them just over a year ago even the cheapest cost a stratospheric $1000. Today, prices have plummeted, and an ever-expanding range of high-definition movies makes Blu-ray an increasingly attractive option.

The cheapest HD drive we’ve found is the Pioneer BDC-S02. This forgoes Blu-ray-writing capabilities to keep its price to a very reasonable $212, although it still reads both single and dual-layer Blu-ray discs and successfully played every Blu-ray movie we threw at it. DVD-writing capabilities are underwhelming, though: single-layer DVDs write at a maximum of 12x, which we found translated to 7mins 15secs for a DVD+R and seven minutes flat for a full DVD-R. Dual-layer discs are limited to 4x – a tedious burn time of 27 minutes. If your priority is watching Blu-ray movies then speedy DVD-writing isn’t crucial, but it’s still a limited drive.

For an extra $300, you can move up to the Pioneer BDR-202BK, which adds Blu-ray-writing capabilities. In our tests, it filled a 25GB single-layer BD-R disc in under 24 minutes at maximum speed, while a rewritable single-layer BD-RE disc took 47 minutes. Disappointingly, although the BDR-202BK can read dual-layer 50GB discs, it can’t write to them. DVD-write speeds were as slow as from the BDC-S02.

The LG GGW-H20L, meanwhile, offers both Blu-ray-writing and HD DVD-playback for $580 (you’ll be able to pick up some bargain HD DVD titles now they’re on their way out – web ID: 103869). It also outdoes its competitors in several ways. First, it can write to dual-layer BD-R discs. With current 2x media, it took an hour to half-fill a 50GB disc, but the drive is capable of 4x writing, so expect that to halve once high-speed discs are available. For single-layer BD-R discs, LG claims a 6x write speed, and we were able to fill a 25GB disc in 21mins 19secs. Writing to DVD was quicker than with Pioneer’s drives, the drive filling a DVD+R in just under six minutes and a DVD+RW in just over seven minutes. Writing to dual-layer discs took an unremarkable 27 minutes, though.

Of course, if you’re not building an HD-capable PC and aren’t planning to author your own HD discs, there’s little reason to choose any of these three drives. A dedicated DVD writer will write discs much faster for less than $100.

The LG GSA-H55N uses the older IDE interface, rather than SATA as employed by all the other drives here, but this doesn’t hinder its performance. Single-layer DVD-Rs were dispatched in just over four-and-a-half minutes, and even dual-layer discs took little over 13 minutes. Considering the $55 asking price, we were impressed to find a copy of Nero Express included in the package, along with a basic DVD authoring package and CyberLink’s PowerDVD.

If a SATA interface is more convenient, the Samsung SH-S203B is a fine alternative. It’s less than $10 more than the LG drive, but performance is similar. Writing single-layer DVDs was a little slower than the LG drive, with DVD+Rs taking 5mins 40secs and DVD-Rs taking just over five minutes. Dual-layer discs completed burning just past the 13-minute mark. With disc-authoring, video-authoring and media-playback software included as standard.

Conclusion
If you want to make cheap, fast data backups, DVD is still the format to beat. With even the cheapest write-once Blu-ray discs working out at around $1 a gigabyte, Blu-ray has a long way to go before it becomes a viable medium for anything other than HD video authoring.

If you’re building a media-centre PC or fancy watching HD movies on your LCD, however, LG’s GGW-H20L brings HD DVD and Blu-ray playback into the realms of affordability.

Source

[Mark]

TSmuxer does MKV to BluRay within 10 mins, love it.

[Marauder]

Tsmuxer and makemkv will put it into a mkv container for you. But rather than copy and put it back to bluray again, you might wanna use the likes of megui to encode to h/x264 to cut the size in half or even do the HQ encode and fit them on a dual layer.

[Marauder]

Sorry David, I forgot that you bought the burner, not the reader. Obviously you want to burn bluray lol.

So NM ignore my msg.

[David Bird]

Just burnt my first Blu-Ray DVD

It was a BD-R DL, it fitted about 47gb and took 42 minutes to burn at 4x.

One thing I noted on Nero there was a large gap between the yellow line and the red line. I stopped piling on the data before it crossed the yellow line, anyone burned a Blu-Ray with data in the yellow area?

[David Bird]

The 42 minute burn time reminds me of when I started to burn CDs, it took about the same time and a mate and I split the $120 for 10 GOLD CD-Rs (not those cheaper green dye). The last time I bought CDs it cost me $11.95 for 50 printable TDKs.

[David Bird]

42 minutes........... IN A PIGS EYE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I started the burn, ETA was 42 minutes, SWEET!!!!!!!!!

I've just checked, it's been burning for 1 hour with 1 hour to go DOH!!!!!!!!!!!

Claims to be burning at (4x 17,980 KB/s) that doesn't seem right.

[Marauder]

You might wanna see if there's a firmware update for your burner Dave? Just a thought.

[David Bird]

Originally Posted by Marauder

You might wanna see if there's a firmware update for your burner Dave? Just a thought.

Update the firmware last night then rebooted.

[Marauder]

What ver of Nero did you say you're using? 8 wasn't it? Dunno, but perhaps 9 has some code improvements for bluray burning?