Blu-ray Features:

A Blu-ray Disc (BD) is a next generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of many leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers. The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of High Definition (HD) video, as well as for high capacity of data storage.

Blu-ray Format Type:

Similar to DVD-RAM, a Blu-ray disc can be formatted in the following types: UDF 1.50, UDF 2.00, UDF 2.50, UDF2.60, and FAT32.

Before using BD-R and BD-RE media for writing files on the disc, we must logically format the media. Once we have logically formatted a BD-R or BD-RE disc, it can be used to write files just as you would do with a Pen Drive, Flash Drive, hard disk or DVD-RAM. In the illustration below we will use Panasonic UDF Formatter (DVDForm) version 5.1.1.0 to format a BD-RE disc.

DVDForm offers several format types for BD-RE disc

It took 37 seconds to quick format a BD-RE disc in FAT32

BD-RE Single Layer discs formatted with FAT32

Now we will attempt to do a quick format on a BD-RE media with format type UDF2.5.

Formatting a BD-RE disc in UDF2.5

BD-RE Single Layer discs formatted with UDF2.5

Let’s move along to check out the LG BH08LS20’ reading and writing performance

Reading and Playability of commercial BD-ROM SL/DL: 

Here we will look at how the LG BH08LS20 performs when reading and playing back commercial BD-ROM discs.

BD-ROM SL

The LG BH08LS20 read our SL BD-ROM at a speed of 4.84X.

BD-ROM DL

Reading of BD-ROM DL is done at 4.8X.

Both discs also play back perfectly on our test system using PowerDVD Ultra which is included in the software package from CyberLink.

Now we will move along and take a look at the writing abilities for this drive…….

BD-R and BD-R DL Writing Speed and Quality:

To demonstrate burning data on a Blu-ray disc, we will use Nero CD-DVD Speed with Create Disc feature. We will use ImgBurn when we burn Hi-Def video. The ScanDisc test is performed in the LG BH08LS20 drive to check if there is any issue with the burned disc.

Now let us take a look how the drive performs on various BD-R media:
 

CD-DVD Speed reports this media is capable of writing at 8X.

Verbatim BD-R with MID VERBATIMa is supported up to 8X speed.
Thanks to Verbatim for providing this media.
 

Writing Verbatim BD-R with nearly 25GB of video at 8X speed
 

Transfer Rate test

ScanDisc test
 

As we can see, the LG BH08LS20 writes these 2X BD-R media from Verbatim at 8X with no problems.

CD-DVD Speed reports this media is capable of writing at up to 6X.

Writing our TDK BD-R at 6X speed
 

Transfer Rate test
 

ScanDisc test
 

The LG BH08LS20 had no issues with this media from TDK Corp.

Nero CD-DVD Speed reports this media is able to write at 6X.

Memorex BD-R 2x media with MID: MEI T01.
 

Writing Memorex BD-R 2X MEI T01 at 6X speed with ImgBurn
 

Transfer Rate test
 

ScanDisc test
 

As you can see from the TRT and the ScanDisc the BH08LS20 had no problems with this media.

Sony BD-R 6x media with MID: NN3 002.
 

Writing Sony BD-R 6X at 8X speed
 

ImgBurn Log
 

Transfer Rate test
 

ScanDisc test
 

The LG BH08LS20 reads and writes our Sony Blu-ray (BD-R) test media without any problems.

Now let’s take a look at how the LG BH08LS20 performs with our BD-R DL test media.

Disc Info

DVD Identifier

Burning with ImgBurn at 6X

ImgBurn Log

Transfer Rate Test

ScanDisc Test

The LG BH08LS20 burned our HD Video to our test disc in 43 minutes and 35 seconds.

Disc Info

DVD Identifier

Burning with ImgBurn at 8X

ImgBurn Log

Transfer Rate Test

ScanDisc Test

The LG BH08LS20 burned our HD Video to our test disc in just under 43 minutes.

Let’s move on to testing the drive at writing to our BD-RE test media.

BD-RE Writing Speed and Quality

Now let us take a look at how the drive performs on various BD-RE media:
 

Verbatim BD-RE 2X media with MID: VERBATIM0.
Thanks to Verbatim USA for providing this media.
 

Writing Verbatim BD-RE 2.3X
 

Transfer Rate test
 

ScanDisc test

As we can see, the LG BH08LS20 wrote to the 2x BD-RE Verbatim media in about 39 minutes. Transfer rate test as well as ScanDisc show no problem.

TDK BD-RE 2x media with MID: TDKBLDWBA.
 

Writing TDK BD-RE 2.3X speed
 

Transfer Rate test
 

ScanDisc test
 

The drive performs well with this TDK Blu-ray media.

Sony BD-RE 2X media with MID: SONY ES1.
 

Writing Sony BD-RE 2.3X speed
 

Transfer Rate test
 

ScanDisc test
 

No problem with this Sony Blu-ray media.

LG BD-RE 2X media with MID: LGEBRES01.
 

Writing LG BD-RE 2.3X speed
 

Transfer Rate test
 

ScanDisc test
 

No problem in writing and read-back with this LG Blu-ray media. Transfer rate test and ScanDisc test are both good.

Now let’s take a look at how the LG BH08LS20 performs with our BD-RE DL test media.

Panasonic BD-RE 2X media with MID: MEI T01.
 

Writing Panasonic BD-RE 2X speed
 

Transfer Rate test
 

ScanDisc test
 

No problem in writing and read-back with this Panasonic BD-RE media.

Summary:

As we can see, the LG BH08LS20 drive supports writing all of BD-R/DL media at 6-8X speed with ImgBurn.  We will also test with CDSpeed and provide our findings below.

The BH08lS20 also reads and writes BD-RE single and double layer discs without any problem. ScanDisc tests show no problem at all.

Write times shown below are when using ImgBurn

Writing BD-R/RE and BD-R DL with CDSpeed

Now we will burn our BD-R/RE and BD-R DL media with Nero’s CDSpeed for comparison.  Thanks to nikoneko Ya for providing these discs.

Sony BD-R media
 

Writing this Sony BD-R at 8X
 

Transfer Rate test
 

ScanDisc test
 

The LG BH08LS20 writes to this media at 8X in 13 minutes and 15 seconds using CDSpeed; no problems with the Transfer Rate Test or DiscScan test.

Sony BD-R DL media
 

Writing this Sony BD-R DL at 2X
 

Transfer Rate test
 

ScanDisc test

No problems with our BD-R DL (Sony media) furnished by nikoneko Ya

Write times shown below are when using CDSpeed

Blu-ray playback test

Since we burned 6 of our test discs with HD Video, we tested them with our stand-alone BD player; here is a table to show those results:

In addition to testing with our Samsung BD-P1400 Blu-ray player, the LG BH08LS20 plays back our High Definition Blu-ray movies with the included software from CyberLink without any issues.

Let’s head on to the “Author’s Page” where we will conduct some real world tests with the LG BH08LS20 Drive……