Posted by Goro on 03/20/06 14:13

not much really earthshattering here and it is still a prototype and
it's whatyou might expect form a G1 proto: does the main stuff but
doesn't really do it well.... yet. Even MORE reason to keep waiting...

-goro-

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/03/17/review_samsung_sh-b022/page2.html

he single 12.7GB file took 25m 31s to write, so it'll take roughly
twice that to fill up the whole disc. Doing the same test, but with the
separate files - 4,486 of them - took slightly longer, 26m 29s. So
we're back to the having to wait an hour or so to burn a full disc.

I was rather disappointed when I found out that the review sample
didn't offer DVD or CD writing abilities. Now, I could've lived with
the fact that it couldn't write to CD, as this is a rather old
technology in comparison, but the lack of DVD support seems just plain
odd. Still, this was an early prototype and things may very well change
by the time the product is launched. Samsung was showing off the same
drive at CeBIT, but this one was clearly labelled as having DVD writing
capabilities, which is promising.

So what about the BD media? Well, the BD-RE disc looked very much like
a CD, but it had a dark grey surface which didn't look very reflective.
Smudging it with finger prints didn't result in any problems reading
the data, so there doesn't seem to be any need to worry about minor
marks corrupting the densely packed data.

Samsung hasn't even set a price on the drive, although I was told it
was likely to end up in the $800-900 category - ouch. It's claimed that
HD DVD will be cheaper, but for now we'll just have to bide our time
and wait until retail products hit the shelves. It's also worth taking
into account that dual-layer media will be available later this year
with 50GB of storage capacity, so unless you have the cash to spare and
you don't mind being an early adopter, you might just want to wait
until then.

Finally, there's the issue of what you can use a Blu-ray drive for.
Sure you can store 25GB of files on it, but you can't play it back in
anything else than your own drive, unless your mates are as wealthy as
you. Living-room BD players should be able to handled video discs
you've authored, but HD DVD players won't, at least not for the time
being. There are far too many question marks about Blu-ray as a
consumer technology, but the good news is that it's as easy to use as a
DVD writer as long as you're only after a high-capacity storage medium.
Verdict

It's early days of Blu-ray, and the Samsung SH-B022 is the first drive
to make an appearance outside company labs and beyond the exhibition
stands. Hopefully Samsung will make some improvements before retail
products become available - in particular, ensuring it will at least
support DVD writing. ®

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