Introduction

As a main advocate of the format, Sony is often synonymous with Blu-ray and the recent triumph of the HD format over HD DVD has added much gloss to Sony's image, especially its Blu-ray equipped PlayStation 3 console. However, it may not seem that way if one browses our Optical Storage reviews. While we have reviewed a couple of Sony Blu-ray drives, the specifications on these drives don't exactly keep up with the other major Blu-ray manufacturer that's aggressively introducing its products into the market here - LG.

Consistently pushing the envelope for optical drives in recent times, LG's joint venture with Hitachi Data Storage has produced combo drives that read both Blu-ray and HD DVD, while at the same time, breaking the barrier for Blu-ray write speeds. We have already seen one such hybrid drive recently, the GGC-H20L, which could read both HD formats but only write to DVD and CD media. Obviously, with the format war officially over, there's less of a need for these hybrid drives but since the technology has been developed, why not use it? In fact, LG has just sent us a Blu-ray writer capable of writing to Blu-ray media at 6x, making it the fastest now in the market, surpassing the 4x versions that are available from Pioneer and Sony.

In this region at least, LG seems to be one of the more active manufacturers pushing Blu-ray drives, though in its case, its products are often hybrid drives that support HD DVD too.