Lite-On announces today that it will launch a new 4X Blu-ray Disc Writer in Europe. The DH-4B1S is the successor of the widely appreciated LH-2B1S, one of the first Blu-ray drives on the market. The DH-4B1S can write BD-R media at 4X, a 50% speed increase and time saving compared to its predecessor.

The DH-4B1S uses a Constant Linear Velocity (CLV) writing strategy for writing BD-R media, which means that the data transfer rate is constant at 4X (18MB per second) during the whole writing session. Another common writing strategy, used by some 6X BD writers on the market, is Constant Angular Velocity (CAV). This writing strategy starts at a lower speed and gradually speeds up to a maximum of 6X only at the end of the writing session.

Many users don't use the full capacity of a disc when they make a back-up. "If you use only 75-80% of the disc capacity, a 4X CLV writing strategy will be a quicker solution then a 6X CAV strategy," says Marketing Manager Jelmer Veldman. "We see a growing market acceptance for Blu-ray as the format of choice for High Definition content playback and for high volume archiving. With this 4X BD writer Lite-On delivers a faster solution for backing-up data on Blu-ray Discs."

PBD-RE media can be written at 2X and the DH-4B1S reads BD-ROM discs at 4X. Furthermore, the drive can burn DVD±R at 12 and DVD±R DL at 8X.The maximum speed for writing DVD+RW is 8X, DVD-RW at 6X, CD-R (reading and writing) at 40X and CD-RW at 24X.

The DH-4B1S will be available across Europe at the end of May and complements the Lite-On Blu-ray product portfolio, which also consists of an internal and an external BD-ROM drive.

Specifications: