LG GGW-H20L

Sasha Muller | Jun 18, 2008 1:04 PM
LG | http://www.lg.com.au
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RRP: $580 (time of review)
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Add high-definition reading and writing capabilities to your PC with a Blu-ray drive, or save money with a plain DVD writer
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.

click to view full size image
Write Speeds. Click to enlarge.


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.


1 Pioneer BDR-202BK
$512
www.megaware.com.au
overall
4/6

2 LG GGW-H20L
$580
www.shoppingsquare.com.au
overall
5/6

3 Pioneer BDC-S02
$212
www.sltech.com.au
overall
3/6

4 Samsung SH-S203B (SATA)
$62
www.pcsol.com.au
overall
5/6

5 LG GSA-H55N (IDE)
$55
www.i-store.com.au
overall
5/6
This article appeared in the June, 2008 issue of PC Authority.