I
t doesn’t matter a lick to us that Blu-ray has
prevailed in the high-def format war if the
hardware remains expensive and uninspir-
ing. We have to admit, we thought the tide was
turning when we reviewed LG’s GGW-H20L
Blu-ray burner back in December. That drive
represented a dramatic price drop (falling to
$500 from its predecessor’s $1,200 price tag in
a matter of months—and now settled at $400
MSRP), and its 6x rating for BD-R media re-
sulted in burn times we could actually live with
(22.5GB in a little over 20 minutes).
Sadly, Lite On has not followed LG’s lead.
True, the company’s latest Blu-ray burner is
cheaper than the Lite On LH-2B1S we reviewed
in July 2007 ($450 vs. $600) and has a faster
BD-R write rating (4x vs. 2x), but we’re not the
least bit moved by these changes. For start-ers, the new DH-4B1S is still more expensive
than the aforementioned LG GGW-H20L, and
its “improved” BD-R rating has actually made
burning to that media slower! It took us 48:00
(min:sec) to burn 22.5GB to a single-layer disc.
Certain this was a mistake, we ran the test
again—for a time of 48:14! (With the 2x Lite
On drive, this very task took just 46:14.) The
DH-4B1S was actually faster burning to BD-RE
media—where it’s rated at just 2x—writing
22.5GB to a rewriteable disc in 46:12.
With such pathetic Blu-ray performance,
it might seem moot to discuss the DH-4B1S’s
other attributes, such as DVD burn times, but
here you have it: The drive is rated at 12x for
DVD+R single-layer discs; in our tests, it wrote
4.38GB of data to that media in 7:09 (min:sec).
That’s a decent time, but LG’s GGW-H20L,which is rated at 16x, took just 5:40 to complete
this task.
Like all the Blu-ray burners we’ve ever
tested, the DH-4B1S comes bundled with a col-
lection of CyberLink applications for backup,
copying, playback, and authoring chores. We
can’t hold the drive responsible, but we’d ap-
preciate CyberLink’s soft ware more if it weren’t
so twitchy.
Aesthetically, the drive is pretty standard,
although it does sport an LED strip across its
front that signifi es drive operation and whether
it’s working with CD, DVD, or BD media. The
DH-4B1S smartly sports a SATA interface.
We always expect technology to progress
by leaps and bounds, but a drive such as this
makes us feel like Blu-ray is at a standstill.- K A T H E R I N E S T E V E N S O N
Lite On’s new drive may sport a faster
4x BD-R write rating, but it performs
worse than its 2x kin.IN THE LAB^
REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE76 | MAXIMUMPC | AUG 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
A drive that’s made zero strides since its aged
predecessor
VERDICT$450, http://www.liteonit.com5
Not-so-outrageous
price, decent DVD
burn speed, SATA
interface.Still too expensive,
DVD burns could be
better, BD-R burn
speeds suck.PANDA BEARLITE ON 4X BLU-RAY TRIPLE WRITERPANDEMONIUMBest scores are bolded. All tests were conducted using the latest version of Nero CD-DVD Speed and Verbatim media. Our test bed is a Windows XP SP2
machine using a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700, 2GB of Corsair DDR2/800 RAM on an EVGA 680 SLI motherboard, one EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS card, a
Western Digital 500GB Caviar hard drive, and a PC Power and Cooling Turbo Cool PSU.BENCHMARKS
Lite On DH-4B1S LG GGW-H20LI
DVD Write Speed Average 8.99x 12.09x
DVD Read Speed Average 9.10x 9.24x
Access Time (Random/Full) 137ms/213ms 99ms/192ms
CPU Utilization (8x) 31% 23%
Time to burn 22.5GB to BD-R (min:sec) 48.00 21:23
Time to burn 22.5GB to BD-RE (min:sec) 46:12 39:38Lite On 4x
Blu-ray Triple
Writer DH-4B1S