Samsung's SH-B083 Internal Optical Drive Reads Blu-ray, Burns CD/DVD

Blu-ray adoption may slowly be growing, but that's not stopping Samsung from trying to hasten the process. Today, the company introduced its first-ever internal Blu-ray Disc combo drive, with the ability to read BD-R and BD-ROM discs at 8x. It'll also read CDs at up to 40x and DVDs at up to 16x.

With Samsung’s fast dual layer jumping algorithm, the new SH-B083 COMBO drive features an average access speed of 350ms which is much faster than any other drive on the market. The new drive reads Blu-ray discs and reads and writes CD/DVDs--in other words, this is the perfect drive for your bargain HTPC and for those who aren't going to bother paying top-dollar for BD-R media, anyway.

The drive also features a few unique extras that aren't typically seen. It's an eco-friendly drive that features low power consumption and an aerodynamic frame design to lower acoustic noise by preventing pressure concentration in several areas of the bezel and door, not to mention that it is equipped with two lenses for more stable reading and writing: one lens for BD read and the other lens for CD/DVD read/write. Spherical aberration compensation technology (SACT) improves reading quality on a BD drive whose protective layer does not have a uniform thickness, and precision step control technology (PSCT) accommodates the higher resolution in the optical pickup head unit (OPU) position control system that the smaller track pitch of BD demands.



It also ships with CyberLink TrueTheater software for upscaling DVDs to Full HD resolution, and it also supports firmware updates to keep up with those pesky Profile x.x updates. It'll be available starting in November for an undisclosed amount.