I was actually thinking of buying an external drive myself and was looking at this one: LG BE12LU38
Not really sure how the burn quality is though. Haven’t found much info on it either. Any opinions on burn quality and media compatibility? Or other suggestions while we are at it?
It should be the same as the 12x drives, however prepare yourself for low firmware support, and as it know, LG drives like high quality media.
Also i would avoid using it on USB2, with the e-SATA you should be fine.
That’s all from me.
[QUOTE=vroom;2631879]It should be the same as the 12x drives, however prepare yourself for low firmware support, and as it know, LG drives like high quality media.
Also i would avoid using it on USB2, with the e-SATA you should be fine.
That’s all from me.[/QUOTE]
Actually I find my WH10 and WH12 drives to be among my best burners with any quality media. You have found some media that they do more poorly with than your other burners? Sometimes a lack of firmware update means that they got it right the first time 
;).
e-SATA is certainly the way to go. Best to avoid the buffer underruns that USB 2.0 can lead to. Unless you have no desire to burn above 4x.
Ritek BD-R had poor quality, i know that ritek isn’t the way to measure quality, but i had a lot of them and now i might be getting some falcon if all goes as planned.
Thanks 
. That would explain our different experiences with the drive. I only burned a couple Ritek with the drive and have avoided them ever since ;). Great to hear you may soon have a better option available 
. The drive can do very well with most BD-R I’ve tried, and quite decent with DVD+R DL for me.
[QUOTE=vroom;2631879]It should be the same as the 12x drives, however prepare yourself for low firmware support, and as it know, LG drives like high quality media.
Also i would avoid using it on USB2, with the e-SATA you should be fine.
That’s all from me.[/QUOTE]Thanks vroom 
So you think I might be having media problems - I know LG drives are a bid picky but I was thinking of only using verbatim media or something. Another drawback is its size; at almost 1.5kg it ain’t really portable now is it?
[QUOTE=deanwitty;2631945]Thanks . That would explain our different experiences with the drive. I only burned a couple Ritek with the drive and have avoided them ever since ;). Great to hear you may soon have a better option available . The drive can do very well with most BD-R I’ve tried, and quite decent with DVD+R DL for me.[/QUOTE]
I suppose you are talking about the drives you mentioned before and not the BE12LU38, right?
Anyways, if you guys have any other suggestions on that price range I am all ears
You can call it portable, if you want to move it around it want be easy.
I would stay with the LG, as i said, LG might now give very frequently new firmware, but generally the overall quality of their drives is very good.
Plus you want have any issues with Verbatim media.
I don’t have the external version (yet), but I do have the internal version (BH12LS38, as well as the very similar WH12LS39). Both have performed very well for me so far, using several media including SmartBlus, FTI Pros, JVC LTHs, Sony NN3s, and Aleratecs (PHILIP-R04). I have not tried burning any Riteks on them yet, but I’m very pleased with them otherwise.
[QUOTE=Hemispasm;2631966]
I suppose you are talking about the drives you mentioned before and not the BE12LU38, right?
Anyways, if you guys have any other suggestions on that price range I am all ears :-)[/QUOTE]
As I have crossflashed my WH10 and WH12 drives to every other WH/BH model sold by LG to date since the WH10 came out, I have to admit that I’ve come to think of them all as basically the same drive :). Very little if any hardware changes from one model to the next. I’m pretty convinced that an LG is a good option.
What will be your primary uses for the drive? How portable should it be for your needs? Perhaps we need to be talking about USB powered drives if you wish to be tucking this in a laptop bag and carrying it around?