In 1988 CD burners were a new innovation, and the capacity was limited to 650MB. Close to 10 years later in 1997, DVD burners came into existence increasing the capacity to 4.7GB and 9.4GB. When each of these technologies became available, they were expensive, slow, and unreliable. Over time, they got better and were eventually perfected to become a standard. Today, Blu-ray burners are the leader in optical storage, with a capacity of 25GB and 50GB on the same size discs as CDs and DVDs.

Hitachi, LG, and HP are three giants in the computer industry, and on occasion they work together to develop a product in order to keep the costs down. The HP branded BH20L Blu-ray burner to be covered in this review is marketed by all three manufacturers, and it is commonly advertised as a Hitachi/LG Blu-ray burner.



Before taking a closer look at the HP branded Hitachi/LG BH20L Blu-ray burner picked for this review from the selection of Blu-ray DVD drives at Geeks.com, let's look at some of the features and specifications found on its product page on the Geeks.com website.

Features and Specifications:

General Features:

» Black bezel
» LightScribe direct disc labeling
» 6x write speed (BD-R SL)
» 4x write speed (BD-R DL)
» 2x write speed (BD-RE SL/DL)
» 6x read speed (BD-ROM)
» 16x write speed (DVD±R)
» 8x write speed (DVD+RW)
» 6x write speed (DVD-RW)
» 4x write speed (DVD±R DL)
» 5x write speed (DVD-RAM)
» 16x read speed (DVD)
» 40x write speed (CD-R)
» 24x write speed (CD-RW)
» 40x read speed (CD)
» SATA/150 interface
» 2 MB buffer underrun

Sustained Rate:

» BD-ROM: 215.79 Mbits/s (6x) max.
» DVD-ROM: 16.62 Mbytes/s (16x) max.
» CD-ROM: 6,000 kB/s (40x) max

Package Includes:

» Hitachi/LG BH20L Blu-ray 6x Burner & 16x DVD±RW DL SATA Drive

Product Requirements:

» Pentium D 3.2 GHz processor or higher
» Windows XP/Vista
» 1 GB RAM or more
» 30 GB free hard drive space (60 GB for Blu-ray disc authoring)
» Available 5.25-inch drive bay
» SATA controller
» SATA cable
» Burning software
» Blank recordable media
» LightScribe-enabled DVD/CD media required for direct disc labeling