Posted by Ian on May 7th, 2008 at 12:34 PM CST

Lite-On Europe has announced the launch of its new 4x Blu-ray Disc writer, the DH-4B1S. The drive features 4x BD-R and 2x BD-RE writing speeds and, according to Lite-On's claims, is faster than 6x BD writers when using 75-80% of a disc's capacity.

The DH-4B1S can write BD-R media at 4X, a 50% speed increase and time saving compared to its predecessor. The DH-4B1S uses a Constant Linear Velocity (CLV) writing strategy for writing BD-R media, which means that the data transfer rate is constant at 4X (18 MB per second) during the whole writing session. Another common writing strategy, used by some 6X BD writers on the market, is Constant Angular Velocity (CAV). This writing strategy starts at a lower speed and gradually speeds up to a maximum of 6X only at the end of the writing session.

Many users don’t use the full capacity of a disc when they make a back-up. “If you use only 75-80% of the disc capacity, a 4X CLV writing strategy will be a quicker solution then a 6X CAV strategy,” says Marketing Manager Jelmer Veldman. “We see a growing market acceptance for Blu-ray as the format of choice for High Definition content playback and for high volume archiving. With this 4X BD writer Lite-On delivers a faster solution for backing-up data on Blu-ray Discs.”

No word yet on price. However, the DH-4B1S will be available across Europe at the end of May. If you'd like to read more, Lite-On's entire press release can be found here.