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Following the April-release of LG’s Super Blu BH100 we commented that although we had to concede that, in most respects, it was a more elegant solution, it was (and still is) prohibitively expensive. Not to mention that the technology supporting the product wasn't exactly up to scratch. What LG needs is a player that offers the convenience of supporting both formats, while also maintaining a price-point that makes the investment worthwhile over two separate players.

How convenient, then, that LG has in fact today launched two new Hybrid HD DVD/Blu-Ray players. The imaginatively named GGW-H2LI (above) and GGC-H2LI (below) are priced at the very reasonable $500 and $400 respectively. The only difference between the two flavours of drive (other than price of course) is that the cheaper GGC can only read HD discs, while the GGW can write to Blu-Ray as well. The 6x write speed means that a 25GB single layer Blu-ray disc will take you just over 16 mins to write (thanks for doing the math Kaarlo). Either way, you’re not going to want to sit around and wait for your PC to finish.


Of course, as there are an ever-increasing number of consumers buying HTPC systems for their living rooms, the usefulness, and appeal, of an HD format capable drive for the PC is only going to increase. Considering the relatively small price difference versus the increased functionality, it seems likely that people will pay the slight premium for being able to write to the formats as well. The proliferation of cheap high-capacity drives undeniably makes both HD DVD and Blu-Ray a very attractive back-up formats over plain old DVD.

LG is currently only supplying these products to the US, but does plan a UK release later in the year, so expect to see more details here when available.

Link:
LG UK

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