http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=747284

This new LG Burner is shipping with Cyberlink Authoring software.

Anybody got anything good/bad to say about it?

Can't believe nobody else is itching to get burning Blu-Ray?

You know I was an "early" adopter before. I bought a HP 4020 CDR when it was $1500. Damn thing had a bug that lead to a class action lawsuit. I don't mean to say that the current drives are buggy (who really knows) but, until the price goes below $100, I'll be waiting until I have a paying job that requires the technology.

I am with Andy. I am waiting for the price to lower a bit on them. The Pioneer and Phillips are around the same price. Phillips is actually a bit lower than the LG here in the states. I would choose the Pioneer over the LG in a heartbeat....

Last night, I ordered one of the LG GGW-H20L burners from excaliberpc.com:

http://www.excaliberpc.com/LG_LIGHTSCRIBE_GGW-H20L_SUPER_MULTI/GGW-H20L/partinfo-id-582771.html

Newegg has them for about the same price, but I order from EXcaliberPC because it says that 4 BD-RE disks are included, in the listing. I've never ordered from EXcaliberPC before, but the feedback at resellerratings.com looks excellent.

The price on these, especially considering the specs (6X write for BD-R, etc.) and bundled software, is considerably better than any other Blu-Ray burner currently available (that I know of). The specs say it will also read HD-DVD disks.

Hopefully it actually works.

Hi Robert,

I am REALLY keen to hear how you get on with this especially the Cyberlink software. Keep us posted!

I got a pleasant surprise today (Saturday). Fedex delivered the LG GGW-H20L today, even though I only paid for the standard ground shipping. It was scheduled to be delivered Monday.

It will be a little while before I try it out though. I haven't built the computer it will be going into yet.

I got curious and decided to pop the LG GGW-H20L in my current main computer, for a quick look. I didn't let the software connect to the internet and update anything, though It sure wants to. I really dislike software that tries to connect to the internet without telling you. It seems to have burned a BDAV onto a BD-RE just fine. PowerDVD did lock up playing it back though! I know the file was ok, because I was able to copy the MPEG2-TS file from the BD-RE to hard drive, and play it, without issue. PowerProducer looks pretty stripped down. It only makes BDAVs and the video option to write an image file to the hard drive is grayed out too. For some reason, when I tried playing a couple of HD-DVDs full screen, PowerDVD displayed the image on my widescreen monitor letterboxed (big disappointment there).

The hardware appears to work fine. The software appears to be pretty weak. I'll give it a better workout when I build the new computer.

I just ordered the LG GGW-H20L, $305 shipped from mwave.com.

What do you recommend for a Blu-Ray player (that plays back BD-R and BD-RE)?

I know that some are using their PS3 for this purpose.

PS3 is probably the safest choice to play burned disks.

I see that Newegg has the LG GGW-H20L for under $300 now:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136137

I got one a couple of weeks ago but had trouble burning anything with it. I sent it back for replacement cos of this, but it actually turned out to be my motherboards Nforce 4 drivers being out of date.

The symptoms for anyone with a problem burnign was that the burn would make it to say 11% to 50% on any particular disk and was random, CD, DVD BD-RE. The Hard Drive light stayed lit and the software (Nero8) locked up. I suspect that it was SATA data crashing and causing the lock up. New drivers sorted it.

I have so far made one video watchable on my PS3, This took 2 or 3 goes to get right, well nearly right.

Attempt 1 Using Ulead Video Studio 11.5, it took 4 hours to make a 20 min film. Using VS11,5 to burn, nothing got written.

Attempt 2 used VS11.5 to write the blu-ray file structure (3 hours) and Nero to burn. I set nero to auto for UDF settings - wouldnt play in pc or PS3.

Attempt 3 used the previously created file structurein nero but set the UDF type manually to 2.5 - Success

I just need to work out a decent workflow now for editing in Liquid an burning a BD-RE or whatever.

Ian

the software is not that advanced, its like windows movie maker compaired to Sony DVD architect or Adobe Encore, and takes a long time to gather the data before burning, but a user friendly interface and good if you want a simple quick DVD made