Blu-ray is expected to hit full force this summer as manufacturers begin launching their set top Blu-ray disc players and BD-R drives for PCs to the mass market along with content, supposedly. A handful of optical storage device manufacturers have already announced versions of PC drives with recording speeds of up to 2x for their first Blu-ray disc writers.

LG Electronics, a long time participant in the optical disc drive market, has gone a step further to announce a summer launch of a 4x Blu-ray disc drive to record to the new high-density media at twice the speed of first generation competitors.

LG's GBW-H10N is said to be able to write to BD-R media at 4x and BD-RE at 2x with support for reading and writing to DV-RAM media at 5x speeds. Below are the specs from LGE:

LG Electronics GBW-H10N Recorder
Reading	Writing
BD-ROM (SL) 4.8x max	BD-R (SL) 2x, 4x CLV
BD-ROM (DL) 4x max	BD-RE (SL) 2x CLV
BD-R (SL) 4.8x max	DVD-R 2x, 4x CLV, 8x, 12x PCAV
BD-RE (SL) 2x CLV	DVD-R Dual Layer 2x, 4x CLV
DVD-ROM (Single/Dual) 16x/8x max	DVD-RW 1x, 2x, 4x, 6x CLV
DVD-R/RW/ 10x/10x/8x max	DVD-RAM 2x, 3x ZCLV, 5x PCAV
DVD-RAM 2x, 3x, 5x PCAV	DVD+R 2.4x, 4x CLV, 8x ZCLV, 12x PCAV
DVD-Video (CSS) 8x max	DVD+R DL 2.4x, 4x CLV
DVD+R/+RW/DL 10x/10x/8x max	DVD+RW 2.4x, 4x, 6x, 8x ZCLV
CD-R/RW/ROM 40x/40x/40x max	CD-R 4x, 8x CLV
CD-DA (DAE) 40x max	CD-RW 4x, 8x, 10x CLV

Pricing is set close to $1000 USD at the time of publication. Since this drive does not support recording to dual-layer media it may be best to wait for second generation drives and dual-layer media to hit before shelling out over a grand if you're not a die-hard optical media fan. Sony has already announced that it will begin shipping dual-layer media by the time LG plans to launch the GBW-H10N to the public and TDK has also announced availability of dual-layer media later this year though no timeframe has been given.