Lite On DH-4B1S-08 Blu-ray Burner

I waited until the format war was over and the victor declared before choosing a side.  Now that Blu-Ray is the clear and absolute winner I decided it was time to buy a burner for my PC.  Aside from the huge price drop since the introduction of Blu-Ray, many different  brands are now making Blu-Ray drives and the competition is bringing the price down even more.  I bought the LITEON DH-4B1S-08 mostly because it is one of the cheapest Blu-Ray burners I could find, if you consider $264 (plus shipping) cheap.  The Sony burner that I was also looking at was over $500 which made the decision that much easier.

 
LITEON DH-4B1S-08 Blu-Ray Burner

The drive is the same physical size as any DVD or CD internal device and installs the exact same way except that this drive is connected via SATA.  Being an SATA drive makes installation a little easier because you don't need to fool with any jumpers or mess with those fat IDE cables.  You simply plug in the SATA data cable and the SATA power cable.  The drive comes packaged with four screws, users guide, quick install guide and CyberLink BD Solution software disc and a single BD-RE 2X disc.  The software contains PowerDVD 8, PowerProducer 5, Power2Go 6, Power Backup and Instant Burn.  It also contains the CyberLink BD/HD Advisor and the user's manual in PDF format.

When you insert a disc into the LITEON DH-4B1S-08 Blu-Ray Burner, you will see an LED on the front indicating whether the disc is BD, DVD or CD.  The DVD and CD indicators are green and the BD indicator is, of course, blue.  The DH-4B1S models are not LightScribe enabled for those who may consider that important.


Drive Specifications


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·         Blu-Ray:  BD-R Write 4X, BD-RE ReWrite 2X, BD-ROM Read 4X (access time 160ms)

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·         DVD:  DVD+/-R Write 12X, DVD+/-R9 Write 8x, DVD+RW ReWrite 8X, DVD-RW ReWrite 6X, DVD-ROM Read 12X (access time 160ms)

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·         CD:  CD-R Write 40X, CD-RW ReWrite 24X, CD-ROM Read 40X (access time 160ms)

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·         Dimensions:  Width  146mm X Height 41.4mm  X  Depth 177.5

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·         Weight:  0.85Kg
 

Minimum System Requirements


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·         Pentium 4 2.0GHz equivalent or faster CPU

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·         512MB or more RAM

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·         30GB Hard Drive
 

BD Authoring and Playback System Requirements


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·         Pentium D 3.4 GHz equivalent or faster CPU

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·         1GB or more RAM

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·         60GB Hard Drive

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·         Recommended GPU:  NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT, 7600GT, 7800GTX512, 7900GX2, 7900GTX, 7950GX2 or later.  ATI Radeon X1600, X1800 and X1900 or later.

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·         HDCP Graphics card with 256MB, PCI-Express 16X, 1920 X 1200 Resolution and 32-bit color

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·         HDCP capable monitor or TV for High Definition digital output

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·         Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4, XP SP2, Vista
 

Blu-Ray Movies

After installing my first Blu-Ray drive I wanted to pop in a movie and indulge in the wonderful world of HD.  So I ran out to the local video store (Video 2000 for those familiar with Appomattox, VA.) and rented "Hellboy II" and "The Covenant".  Hellboy II, by the way, was pretty cool but not as good as the first movie (like most sequels).  Anyway, I was impressed with the quality of definition and my monitor is capable of 1920 X 1200 resolution so I get to watch in Full HD 1080p.  Some movies were not originally filmed in HD so they are up-scaled to 1080p for Blu-Ray and they don't look as good as the ones that were filmed in HD to begin with but they don't look bad.


BD-RE Burn

So I watched my first movie and now I wanted to burn a disc.  Blu-Ray writeable and rewriteable discs are still expensive so I only bought one extra but I got a BD-RE so I can rewrite on it over 10,000 times.  I haven't burned any HD video yet but I did backup my MP3 collection which has grown to a monstrous 23GB.  It is actually over 60GB but I have the rest backed up on another computer.  Anyway it took me quite a while to burn the entire disc, unfortunately I did not think to time it but it was quite a while.  After twenty minutes the progress had barely moved so  I gave up and watched TV for a while and when I checked back a couple hours later it was finished.
On a side note, I did not realize until after I had purchased the drive that this drive does not write to dual layer BD media but it can read dual layer BD discs.  What that means is you can write to the 25GB discs but not the 50GB; so don't buy any 50GB discs if you get this drive.


Conclusion

The LITEON DH-4B1S-08 is a decent buy for backing up 25GB of data at a time or for burning those HD camcorder videos to Blu-Ray movies.  However, be prepared for extremely long burn times depending on the amount of video or data you plan to put on the disc.  If you need to be able to use the 50GB discs then you will want to look at a different drive.  The drive makes for an excellent Blu-Ray movie player but you must also keep in mind that in order to play Blu-Ray movies on your PC you need an HDCP graphics card and monitor or you won't see anything.

Thanks for reading,
Gr8ful ;-)