Review: The all-in-one and only drive you ever need
Over the past few
decades, Lite-On has been regarded as an industry leader in uncompromising
quality of design and consumer satisfaction in a variety of consumer
electronics markets. Most notably, many have become familiar with their
cutting-edge manufacturing processes in semiconductors, LEDs, and most notably
the optical disc drive (ODD) market.
By 1995, the ODD market was a rapidly growing field in the modern
personal computing space, and in order to establish a significant presence,
Lite-On Technology decided to establish a dedicated business unit to produce
high quality CD-ROM drives. A large manufacturing facility was established in
China to meet all demands and Lite-On soon became Taiwan's biggest CD-ROM drive
manufacturer, and number three worldwide.
Since then, the corporation has manufactured a variety of
solutions including CD-ROM drives, DVD-ROM drives, CD-RW/DVD-RW combo drives
and slimline DVD-RW drives for notebooks. Most recently, Lite-On has advanced
its focus into the area of Blu-ray ROM optical drives and is currently
experimenting with consumer demands across a broad spectrum of individually
specialized markets.
For instance, the company began marketing into the field
of Blu-ray writing for desktop PCs with the introduction of its LH-2B1S
2X Blu-ray Disc Triple Writer in November, 2006. Within less than six
months, it had not only introduced its first external
Blu-ray Disc Triple Writer, but had also received the highly prestigious
Red Dot Design Award 2007 for its outstanding international product design.
Over the last three years of the decade, the company has offered multi-optical
format combo devices ranging from Blu-ray/DVD/CD reader, Blu-ray reader/DVD-RW
burner and Blu-ray/DVD-RW burner with a progressive increase in seek times,
interface speeds and buffer sizes.
Today, we intend to review the company’s latest and greatest
internal Blu-ray reader/DVD-RW burner combo drive with emphasis on its
performance advantages and its similarities with previously introduced Blu-ray
optical drives. This will effectively allow us to analyze and hopefully predict
a positive technology efficiency trend in the optical storage drive market and
should be an indicator of Lite-On’s experience in the market.
On hand is the Lite-On iHES208 8X Blu-ray Disc Reader with DVD
Writer Combo, provided to us from the company’s headquarters in Fremont,
California. In perspective, the drive is loaded with 2009’s greatest
technological advancements in the field of Blu-ray, DVD and CD optical reading
capabilities and features a compelling specs sheet to undergo our approval. The
drive is a half-height internal Blu-ray Disc/DVD/CD reader with support for
BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-R DL, BD-RE SL, BD-RE DL, BD DVD-ROM, DVD ± R, DVD ± RW, DVD ±
DL, DVD-RAM, DVD+R9, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, CD-ROM XA, CD-PLUS, CD-I and CD-DA.
Basically, if you have a 12cm or 8cm disc, this drive will more than likely be
capable of playing it. This is not uncommon on most drives, however. What we
are more interested in are the read and write speeds of the Blu-ray and DVD
laser diodes and buffer on the drive respectively. Below is a chart containing
a specification sheet of the three drives we will be comparing.
