Why you would be looking at something like this without the intention to use its Blu-ray capabilities is beyond me.They do them on ebay This is a genuine LG 14X Reader / Writer. If you're not, it's essentially an overpriced DVD drive. If you're going to watch Blu-rays, this is a fantastic product. For that, this drive is fantastic, especially when you accompany it with AnyDVD HD to unlock some pesky Blu-ray features. Since a DVD drive comes in at less than $30 and the IHES208 at around $110, you're only really going to buy one if you intend to watch Blu-rays. While it's fine to replace your current DVD drive with the iHES208, unless you really need to I would suggest that you just keep what your currently using installed to work alongside this drive. The chances are also high as well that the drive itself won't get the same amount of usage as one sitting in your main machine.įor the most part, though, iHES208 performance is good when it comes to DVDs and when it comes to Blu-rays it's fantastic with the biggest bonus being that the drive of course supports the technology. Of course, if the iHES208 is going into something like a HTPC, the chances are you probably already have a DVD player for movies. With DVD-ROM drives being so cheap, motherboards offering us a large amount of SATA connections and in most cases easily supporting two ROM drives, it's not only a small investment, but a wise one. Equally important, if not more so, would be the fact that you're not placing more load than you need to the more expansive Blu-ray drive. This will do a few things first and foremost the biggest benefit is that a drive like the iHAS322 will just be a bit quicker all round when it comes to working with DVDs. When you combine this with the fact that the Blu-ray supporting drive is more expensive, I would suggest that if you've got the room that you look at buying a standalone DVD-ROM drive like the iHAS322 if this drive is going into your main PC. While there might be a more noticeable difference between the burst of the two drives, when it comes to the average read speed you can see they are both almost identical.Ĭompared to the non Blu-ray supporting iHAS322, the iHES208 is a little off the pace when it comes to dealing with DVD content. With Far Cry 2 in hand and two Lite-On drives getting ready to rumble, we'll quickly take the time to see how the two drives compare in a number of speed tests offered by Nero DiscSpeed 5.īoth drives should come in showing similar numbers with the only real difference in numbers being that the iHES208 has a slower write time to DVDs which is something that isn't tested here.Įither way, let's find out how the two drives square up against each other. Hard Disk(s): Western Digital 640GB SATA 2.0 HDD (Supplied by Western Digital)ĭrivers: ATI Catalyst Cedar Beta (HIS HD 5450) Memory: 3 X 2GB Kingston Hyper X PC3-16000 2000MHz DDR CL9 (Supplied by Kingston) Motherboard(s): GIGABYTE EX58-UD5 (Supplied by GIGABYTE) Processor(s): Intel Core i7 920 3.8GHz (190MHz x 20)Ĭooling: Noctua NH-U12P (Supplied by Noctua) Single layers have a speed rating of 8x while dual layer discs have a slower 4x one. The big feature for the iHES208 is of course the Blu-ray support. Where the iHAS322 has a win over the Blu-ray enabled iHES208 is in DVD write speeds with a 22x rating versus the 16x on offer from the iHES208. Read times on both drives are the same with 16x for DVDs and 48x for CDs.
#REVIEW BLU RAY BURNER INTERNAL PC#
Maybe you've got a large screen on your main PC and you enjoy some high def goodness as much as the person with a $3,000 TV in the lounge.īefore we have a look at the performance numbers when compared to our trusty iHAS322, let's have a quick look at the package before checking out the drive itself. You don't just need a HTPC to make use of this drive, though.
Aside from playing DVDs, it manages to also handle Blu-rays, making it an option for home theater PC users.
Before that drive another Lite-On drive was present and before that I had a Pioneer which seemed to be the "in" brand for a long time when it came to ROM drives. We don't look at heaps of ROM drives here at TweakTown, but every once in a while a new one will make its way into the labs and we'll figure out if it's going to replace what we currently have.Ĭurrently sitting on my testbed is a Lite-On iHAS322 which has served me well. Lite-On are one of the clear players in the ROM market thanks to a massive array of drives that span from DVD to Blu-ray, internal to external and everything else that matters when it comes to buying a ROM drive.
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