LG has announced a duo of Blu-ray burners that can burn BD-R media at 8x speed. LG BE08LU is the internal model, while LG BH08LS sits externally and is connected via either USB 2.0 or Firewire. With 8x write speed LG’s new Blu-ray drives can, in theory, feed a BD-R disc with up to 35MB/s. Unfortunately theory and practice does not go hand in hand with disc burning, but a 50GB disc will finish in around 30 minutes at 8x speed.
LG isn’t exactly thrilled about the slow growth of the Blu-ray format so far and its new 8x drives are not expected to appear until later this year, which means that 8x drives from Pioneer, Sony and Panasonic will remains alone in the front row, but since we’re still waiting for 8x qualified media there’s no real rush.
