Samsung late last month announced their new Samsung SH-B123 Blu-ray Disc internal drive and lucky for me I was able to get my hands on one to test out, and I have to say I am pretty impressed by the drive.
Installing the drive is simple anyone with basic computer knowledge can install it with no issues. What is also cool about the drive is it comes with a feature called BD Advisor, which will let you know if your computer can handle Blu-Ray content. If it can not it will inform you what needs to be upgraded on your system. But people you all should know ahead of time if your system can handle a product like the SH-B123 before you buy it.
After I installed the drive into my system replacing my regular DVD drive with no bells and whistles I immediately popped in a DVD. The reason I stuck in a DVD instead of a Blu-Ray is because the SH-B123 has a feature called TrueTheater HD, which up converts to near HD Quality your current DVDs.
I never buy these up converting claims because I have purchased a Blu-Ray player for my television that did not up convert DVDs corretly, but the SH-B123 did a great job up converting and it left me impressed. Sure it wasn’t HD quality but it was a lot better than with my previous DVD player. So the SH-B123 won some brownie points right away with me.
The SH-B123 is not only a blu-ray player but also a burner and no it doesn’t burn blu-rays but DVDs. Burn speed varies from 8x to 16x for DVDs and 24x - 58x for CDs. Burning was easy and a synch with the included suite of Cyberlink software.
The included software from Cyberlink will allow you to watch dvds and blu-rays, burn dvds and cds and even back up your content to disc.
For more information on the SH-B123 visit http://www.samsung.com
Comments: (7)
Adam on Fri, Aug 06th, 2010 at 12:09 PM
Has the SH-B123 been released yet? I know the SH-B123A is available in Austraila but there is no information of SH-B123 on samsung that I can find, and it was claimed to be available worldwide in July.
Does anybody know? Not even Samsung Tech Support has any information.
Nirchi on Fri, Aug 13th, 2010 at 04:44 PM
For whatever reason, it’s not available for purchase yet. I’ve checked all the major online retailers (Newegg, Amazon, TigerDirect, etc) and nobody is selling it. I even checked a local Best Buy and CompUSA - no dice. I called 1-800-SAMSUNG, spoke to a sales rep and they confirmed it’s unavailable.
At this point in time, the SH-B123 is vaporware. If I had to speculate, they probably ran into some production issues which caused a delayed release. If you can wait, I’d be willing to bet you’ll see it arrive later this month or next month. If you need a combo drive now with fast BD-R speed, I’d recommend picking up one of the LG 10X BD-ROM drives from Newegg:
David on Mon, Aug 16th, 2010 at 04:34 AM
I wouldn’t call this a review. You don’t say anything about rip speeds (compared to the previous top model for example), the noise, whether the blue led incorporated in the eject button is irritating or not, etc.
Nirchi on Thu, Aug 19th, 2010 at 01:14 PM
Quoted from Tom’s Hardware:
“Unfortunately the retail release date for the SH-B123 has been pushed back to later this year, at this time an exact date has not been announced. The little brother of the SH-B123 was released earlier this year in March and has set the standard for many BD players. You can find this player for a decent price around $80 to $100, not a bad price for that nice of hardware.”
The “little brother” referenced here is the SH-B083L, which features 8X (36.0 MB / s) BD-R speed. If BD-R speed is not that important to you and you love Samsung, it’s a great 2nd choice.
After hearing this disappointing news, I purchased the OEM version of LG’s UH10LS20. It has 10X BD-R speed and a 4MB buffer. Reportedly capable of ripping Avatar (BR) in 23 minutes once the “riplock” is disabled (see below).
Riplock? --> A lot of drives these days have their read/write speeds crippled in the firmware by what is known as “riplock”. A simple firmware patch with the help of a 3rd party tool (Google it) will disable the BD-R cap and allow you to rip at the rated BD-R speed of (nearly) 10x.
Jed on Fri, Aug 20th, 2010 at 01:07 PM
@Adam/anyone
Isn’t the sh-b123a the same thing as the sh-b123?
If not can anyone point to whatever proves the differences, if any?
Thank-you.
Jed on Fri, Aug 20th, 2010 at 01:16 PM
I think it might simply be the same thing but the “asian” version??
http://www.samsung.com/sec/consumer/it/odd-option/opticaldiscdrive/SH-B123A/KRBH/index.idx?pagetype=prd_detail&subsubtype=blu-ray
Stuff is often differently named for the Asian/Australasian market compared to north America. Despite often being the same device…
What do ya’ll reckon?
Jed on Tue, Aug 24th, 2010 at 12:50 AM
I think there is only the SH-B123L and ‘A’.
I think it’s been misreported that there’s an SH-B123!
And even if there is an SH-B123, it has to be a re-branded A or L.
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