As Blu-ray continues to grow in popularity, more and more people are considering the purchase of a BD-ROM drive. To date the biggest obstacle for many consumers has been the price, which until the last few months has consistently been over $100 for even a reader.
Earlier this year Lite-On introduced the iHOS104 BD-ROM drive. At around $60 for the OEM version and $70 for the retail model it's currently the least expensive Blu-ray reader you can buy.
We decided to pick up an OEM unit and try it out.
The iHOS104 is rated for 4X Blu-ray reading, 8X DVD and 32X CD reading. It comes with an OEM version of Cyberlink's PowerDVD 8 BD Edition.
The first thing we looked at was read speed. We used Nero 9's DiscSpeed application to read both dual layer and single layer commercial Blu-ray (BDMV) discs, and also tested the drive's DVD reading capabilities.
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Somewhat surprisingly, the iHOS104 manages to read double layer (BD50) discs faster overall (average read speed) than single layer. This seems to be due to the fact that it takes a long time to reach maximum read speed.
Burst rate, on the other hand was significantly better for single layer discs. This doesn't come as any great surprise since single layer discs are easier to read than double layer.
Overall Blu-ray reading performance was quite acceptable. It took around 20 minutes to rip a 17.5GB BD25 disc and 45 minutes to rip a 42GB BD50 disc.