LG's 2nd gen Super Multi Blue Blu-ray / HD DVD hybrid drives and plans
Also in LG hybrid high def disc news, the company is offering 10 HD movies on either Blu-ray or HD DVD for free when you snag a $1,200 Super Blu BH100, but only until July 21st -- that'd be this Saturday. Also of note, LG says we should "stay tuned" for a followup to said BH100, but it isn't prepared to announce further details. Bummer.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Erwos @ Jul 19th 2007 9:39PM
I must admit, the drives are finally starting to come down into the acceptable price ranges. $500 for dual-read and BR-D write (for backups!) isn't bad - easily comparable to early DVD burners. Once they get it down to $250, and I think they will in the next year, I'll probably splurge for one.
JohnTitor @ Jul 19th 2007 9:45PM
These companies are over doing it
putting burners and support of every format and stuff
it's good but I bet they would get way more sales if they just made a simple Blu-Ray or HD-DVD internal drive, that's it no super-multi, no +/-RW...
and it should easily be at least a little cheaper than the Xbox's external drive ($190)
now that's something that would interest me
Craig @ Jul 19th 2007 9:57PM
i'm guessing you'd want to watch movies on such a drive, but it would be worthless if you don't also have an HDCP compliant monitor and video card
JohnTitor @ Jul 19th 2007 10:33PM
are y0u sure that it's nothing software can't handle?
either way my hardware is HDCP complaint and I didn't even choose them for that reason, so it seems it'll become the industry standard anyway
Zadillo @ Jul 19th 2007 9:49PM
Definitely nice to see the prices continue to come down.......... frankly I'm in no rush to get a blu-ray burner (last time I was at a store, single recordable blu-ray discs were still pretty pricey), but it looks like it won't be too much longer until they are pretty much mainstream in price.
Craig @ Jul 19th 2007 10:43PM
no, software won't be able to handle it. lucky that your stuff is HDCP compliant. nothing i have is... and my computer's not that old. the standard really should have been implemented well before i bought my stuff, but it wasn't
Jack @ Jul 20th 2007 6:35AM
There is software available
http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html
should do the job if your processor is fast enough
Daniel Smith @ Jul 19th 2007 11:14PM
as long as you remember GGW Blu-ray burning model as Girls Gone Wild I don't think you'll have a problem differentiating the two models.
Anton @ Jul 19th 2007 11:22PM
This would go great with my pirated movie collection!
htpcuser @ Jul 20th 2007 3:02AM
I've seen a few announcements for HD/BR combo drives but they're very rare at retail. Does anyone know when these things will really start to show in numbers?
batfastad @ Jul 20th 2007 6:41AM
This is good news on the pricing. Once the media comes down then this is game on.
Blu-Ray does appear to be winning in the burner side of things.
Also I notice that in every HMV I've been in recently, Blu-Ray has had double the space and titles that the HD-DVD section has.
But in terms of movies, I'll take or leave HD for a while.
DVD was such a huge huge improvement over VHS that it will be difficult to dislodge. People don't fall for the "It's better quality (and conveniently, more difficult to pirate)" thing any more.
For me the biggest benefit of these formats is data backup.
A dual-layer BD-RE formatted as UDF for drag+drop backups of 50GB! Nice!
Some one please correct me if my understanding of BD-RE is incorrect... I think/hope you can do UDF/packet drag+drop as well as burning a disc conventionally.
Doesn't matter how long it takes to copy if you're able to get that sort of archival storage for $20-$30 per disc (and when they're available and the price drops, game on)!
I agree with JohnTitor above. It's not as if people will be ditching their current DVD burners to replace it with one of these.
From a small-business perspective, these are well in price range now for reasonably high-capacity backup use though!
Bruce @ Jul 20th 2007 10:25AM
Unless these versions fully support HD-DVD's HDi they are just as useless as the original drive, which my guess would be they still lack this functionality or Sony would not allow it to be marketed. So once again it will be an overpriced mediocre piece of equipment.
revs @ Jul 21st 2007 6:45PM
Some one mantioned that it looks likely it supports HDi as it has the HDDVD logo on it. If you dont meet the HDDVD eqruirements then supposedly you cannot use the logo.
Andy @ Jul 22nd 2007 6:44AM
How can a drive that only sends unprocessed data to the computer not be compatible with a software feature such as HDi? It seems to me that that's up to the player. I think the other "hybrid" players that also played blu-ray were just that, players, not computer drives, if my memory serves right.