Customer Reviews

LG GGW-H20L Super Multi Blue - Blu-ray Disc Burner / HD DVD-ROM Drive w/ Lightscribe - 6x2x6x/3x - Serial ATA - internal - 5.25"

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

For those that are used to using the combination of "AnyDVD by Slysoft" and "DVDShrink 3.2" to backup dvd's and are curious if there are similar steps for doing this with blu-rays. IT IS. Unfortunately there is no "dvdshrink 3.2 for blu-ray disks". There are several other methods that are very effective. I searched for a long time to find out this stuff so read carefully.

In general, what I do with this drive, is backup my blu-ray movies to an external hard drive, then stream them to my 52 inch samsung from my laptop using its HDMI port(which doesn't even have a blu-ray drive. If this sounds like something your trying to do then read on. If not, you should highly consider it.

Using AnyDVDHD by Slysoft first insert the blu-ray movie, right click the AnyDVD icon and click "Rip Video DVD to Harddisk". After that go to the directory in which you ripped the DVD to. Then Locate the correct .m2ts file that contains the movie (BDMV/STREAM).
An .m2ts file for dummy's is the blu-ray version of an .vob file. So usually the largest .m2ts file is the movie. You can run .m2ts files as video files through Nero v8 Showtime. Once you find the main movie .m2ts files (usually about 25 gigs). Locate another freeware program called TsRemux. This is just like DVDshrink 3.2 in the way that it can stream out unnecessary content (subtitles/foreign languages). Through TsRemux open up the .m2ts file that you have determined is the movie. Then you will see the extra contents. Select the first video stream, the first audio stream, and the first subtitle stream (they are usually the English ones, sometimes you may have to re-do this to locate the correct sound, but there should only be ONE OF EACH selected). Make sure you click the box about where the streams are that says "Blu-Ray TrueHD to .....". Click "remux" and viola. What was a 25 gig movie file should now only be about 15 gigs.

NOTE**** Right now it is WAY more cost efficient to back up your blu-rays to an external hard drive than to re-burn them onto a blu-ray disk. Disks average at about 25 dollars each. That's about eight movies for 200 dollars right? A 320 gig e.xternal will run you just as much as eight blu-ray disks but can fit 21 movies (at 15 gigs each).

NOTE* There are no advertisements in this review, I'm simply stating what I use to backup my own blu-ray disks, please only use the software that you find is most convenient for yourself. Thanks for reading and I hope I was helpful.
*Any further question google "Laymans Guide to Blu-ray" and click the first link.
Good Luck!

Inwardly, I've been sceptical. I had read all of the reviews for the LG Blue-ray Burner Drive, and there were enough positives to outweigh the negatives so I bought it; but I still expected headaches. Pleasantly, I have been surprised. The drive easily inserted into my computer's (HP M9040N)spare drive bay. The cables provided with the drive connected the power to my computer's spare plug and inserted easily into a spare SATA port on the motherboard. From there, I powered up and Vista quickly recognized the drive and installed the drivers. My keyboard quick buttons for open and close of the spare bay worked instantly.

I opened my Pinnacle Studio 12 software to a family video project I had set up the day I ordered the new blue-ray drive. I then went to the Make Movie tab on my software and the new drive was recognized. I had 23 gigabytes of AVCHD video edited and prepared for DVD authorizing, so I started the Make Movie process and away it went. This was a lot of 1080i video to burn so the computer took nearly 4 hours to render the project and then burn it to the disk, but in the end, I had my first blue-ray disk of family videos. The disk plays flawlessly on my Sony BDP-S350. The menu I set up in Studio 12 runs better than standard DVDs I had tried in the past.

This burner was purchased mostly to put my families home movies on a blue-ray disk so the footage is backed up in case anything happens to the original video saved on my computer's hard drive. I can also play my home movies easier since I don't have to view my computer on the TV and open up programs to find videos I produce. Now I just put a disk in the player and away the video goes. Also, playback of my HD video on my TV from my computer was pretty good, but still occasionally herky-jerky, but on blueray, my videos finally play smooth and at full resolution.

Bought this burner a week ago, loaded Adobe CS-3 Premier Pro and Adobe CS3 Encore and burned my first Blu-ray disc within a few minutes. Videomaker magazine, April issue, was critical of the software bundle that came with the burner but LG has apparently made changes & the unit plays HD-DVD and Blu-ray without any problems.

I installed one of these in my media pc about 5 weeks ago, and upgraded the firmware from YL01 to YL03 using the enclosed software and internet download from LG. It plays and burns Blu-Ray (up to 50 GB) and DVD (up to 8.5 GB) disks well, at about 1 GB per minute, using either the bundled Cyberlink software or other applications. So far I have not made any coasters with this device, but I have not been particularly aggressive about running other hoggish applications while burning. Five or so years from now everyone may be able to buy a Blu-Ray burner for $29.95, but at present this one is the best buy, and I'm happy with it. I don't own any HD DVD's, but it is supposed to play those too.

I'm not going to focus on the write/read technical specs and jargon - you can find a lot of those reviews from other buyers or from websites all over the net. My review is just on my personal reactions from using this drive.

First, just the fact that HD-DVD/Blu-ray combo drives are now non-existent makes this item a rarity.
Even if you were to find such a combo player, a consumer home version would cost you at least $600-700.
You can get this baby for under $300 - all you need is a decently equipped computer.

Which gets me to the second point - you'd need at least a dual-core processor with 4 gigs of ram and a decent video card (something with at least 512mb of video RAM) to have good/smooth full-screen HD playback.
If you're just using it to burn CDs and DVDs then you can get away without having all 3, although to burn Blu-ray discs you would need a decent computer (but you wouldn't need a decent video card).

If you take into consideration you would need an Xbox 360 + HD drive + PS3, or comparable HD players, to watch movies what you can do with just this drive and a decent computer, PLUS the ability to burn CD/DVD/Blu-ray discs, then this is an absolute steal.

Highly recommended!

It does everything it says it'll do. It was easy to install and works just fine. I do wish the lightscribe worked faster, but that's not the fault of the burner, it's just the way lightscribe is at the moment. I'm sure it'll get faster as the technology gets better. If you want a good burner, that'll burn anything out there to date, get this burner, you won't be sorry.

It worked perfectly from the instant I turned on the power after installation. I have Vista-64 and three hard drives and this makes the second disk burner in my system. I've burned and played Blu-ray movies, HD movies, etc. and it seems to do everything beautifully. It would be redundant to repeat all the features, but it is really nice when something that does so much actually works as advertised. It must be good because they raised the price 10% since I bought mine here on Amazon in July. I bought a 4 port SATA II expansion card here on Amazon that works great with it. Search for PCI 4 Internal SATA II Ports Controller Card - SIL3124. I strongly recommend both of these products.

Hardware setup was simple. Included software was a little bit sketchy; I elected to upgrade the software to the latest full-featured version (I don't believe all of the advanced features were available with the included version). The backup software did not seem to be very robust; I did my backups as Blu-Ray Data Discs. Since I am backing up a small number of very large (>4GB) files this worked well for me. I haven't tried any of the other included software. The portions that I use work OK.

Read this and you'll understand why I will NEVER buy another LG blu-ray drive again. You shouldn't either.

LG doesn't seem to care about its customers. I will share a "fun" example of life with an LG blu-ray drive in your computer

You buy the Verbatim 97344 - 25 GB 6x Blu-ray 20-Disc Spindle because all the other competitor Blu-Ray players can write to this newer (and lower-cost) Low-to-High "LTH" type of Blu-ray media.

Most GGW-H20N (or L) may not have factory flashed (initial) firmware allowing drive to write to that media.

Maybe there's a firmware update that accomodates "LTH" type of Blu-ray media? OK, so next I spend 20 min searching through LG's horrible support website. Finally, found the firmware in non-obvious location on their site. Hmmm, lets check the README file, where we find these lovely statements:

"This firmware software only works in windows mode with Windows
2000/XP. If you encounter problems in flashing the firmware or have
any questions, please contact our LG customer support line toll-free at
1-800-243-0000."

"This firmware update is for use only on PC's with Windows Vista and Windows XP"

My home PC is running 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate. I want to be clear this drive has always worked fine for me; it is the firmware update that has been the problem. Drive is connected using standard SATA cable.

BOTTOM LINE: firmware could not be updated directly on my Windows 7 PC for this drive

Yes, tried running the firmware update in compatibility mode (Rght Click -> Properties -> Compatibility -> Run in Windows XP mode)
That didn't work either.

I followed web instructions (found on some unofficial forum) that workaround is to pull the drive out and connect using the IDE cable of a PC running Windows
2000/XP. Update the firmware, then take it back OUT and put it back into your Windows 7 PC. That worked. That was my PC. Maybe you get lucky on your Windows 7 PC and firmware installs in the standard easy manner. Who knows. But LG's support website continues to NOT list Windows 7 under OS compatibility for this drive.

I absolutely love this drive. I burned, played and erased backups of blu-ray movies on a Sony 25GB BD-RE disc a couple of times with this drive. No problems at all. I even bought a couple of HD-DVD movies and had no problems playing those too. This drive together with a nice HDMI LCD monitor will make movie watching on your computer very enjoyable. The price doesn't hit your wallet too hard either.