AfterDawn: News

TDK working on 200GB Blu-ray Disc

After only demoing a prototype 100GB Blu-ray disc in May last year, TDK has confirmed its plan to develop discs with 200GB storage capacity. The disc would have four times the capacity of the highest capacity Blu-ray discs currently available. The 100GB BD prototype disc is made up of four data storage layers. It supports a write speed up to 216MBPS, double that of 50GB BD-Rs. That disc is expected to come to the market next year.

Manufacturers are now ready to spread 25GB write-once and re-writable Blu-ray discs around the globe, and they certainly aren't cheap. The single-layer 25GB discs from TDK will cost $19.99 for write-once and $24.99 for rewritable for example. Later this year the company hopes to launch 50GB write-once and re-writable media, priced at $47.99 and $59.99 respectively.



Not many details have been given about 200GB discs, but any expected launch time frame would be uncertain at least. Presuming the disc would contain eight data storage layers, it would be a long time before devices that support the discs would appear, as well as the discs becoming any way affordable to the average consumer.

Source:
The Register

Written by: James Delahunty @ 12 Apr 2006 22:10

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• 19 comments

• kaosX

  gee.. only almost a dollar a gig? sign me up! :/
  
  
  what if you got a bad burn!!! like ripping up your 25 bucks!

  12.4.2006 23:10 #1

• OzMick

  Yep, and you're going to have to buy ANOTHER burner. So you first get a single layer burner, then a dual layer burner, then you have to cough up for a 4 layer reader, then an 8 layer reader. I don't see why there has to be a race to market the 'next gen' media. If the Blu Ray is as superior as they claim, why don't they wait another year or two, perfect the whole system and just slaughter the opposition... I'm not buying it. The same DVD drive you bought when they were released still works with every DVD you can get today, this attitude of incremental upgrades is not going to wash with consumers, or at least not with me. This is pathetic.

  13.4.2006 00:22 #2

• A_Klingon

  I agree - being an early adopter of Blu-ray is a risky business right now.
  
  I hope (and expect) Blu-ray to defeat HD-DVD for both commercial (retail) movies and home PC burning, but until I hear and read *way* more about other's experiences, I'm not buying into Blu-ray. (Yet)
  
  Too many unanswered questions still abound. By the time some of the more serious concerns about blu-ray's reliability, user-restrictions, bugs, limitations, etc. are reported back to us by hands-on users, hopefully the price for blank media and drives/burners will have come down somewhat at that point. Competition will drive the market once Blu-ray catches on, and manufacturing facilities/production techniques become more efficient and streamlined.
  
  But like I say, Sony is going to have to be watched carefully for mandatory DRM measures with home-burnable media.
  
  I can remember paying $20 locally for a single blank CD-R when they first came out. I'm in no hurry this time.
  
  Offnote: A guy at one of our local Roger's DVD rental outlets told me that they have already received a small supply of both HD-DVD and Blu-ray titles, but he's not allowed to talk about it. (much) <gg> (I know the guy personally). :-)

  13.4.2006 03:37 #3

• ZippyDSM

  The tech is movieng way to quickly to buy it right now unless you have money to kill.
  Altho I might bite once the reader/writers are 200-300 and the discs are 5-20 but then again these new discs coem with thier owen troubles I can wait to see what the fail rate is when you scratch smudge them...

  13.4.2006 09:26 #4

• Steve83

  Why does ANYONE care about "proposed" and "demo" and "prototype" and "hopes to launch" and "a long time before"???
  
  What happened to the good ol' days when you had to actually make something that WORKED before you could sell it?
  
  Yeah, I'm thinking about a car that runs on air & goes 200mph safely, but the first release will run on pure platinum & only go 1/2mph and it's only $800,000 but you can only buy 5 at a time and you have to wait 3 years for delivery, so send me your money now.
  
  By the way...
  It won't work, and if you try to fix it, I'll sue you.
  
  If you're even thinking about buying a $20 BD-R disk or a $1,000 burner, you CAN'T laugh at me.

  13.4.2006 09:38 #5

• plutonash

  Like I have said before these guy couldnt even get 4.7 gb DVDs right. Avoid TDK products like the plague. On the report... 25gb disk cost 20.00 bucks so the 200 are 160 dollars. WTF I get 50 blank vertabims for 14 bucks

  13.4.2006 16:50 #6

• D40

  Doesn't matter if it's 4.7 GB or 200 GB the fact is the diskd you burn at home will go bad in two to five years because they are created using heat to alter a chemical layer in the plastic. So much for preserving data, movies, or family photos. I have found that the best and most inexpensive media is a hard drive. You can buy a 320 GB hard drive for about a hundred bucks. If you compress the drive that's 640 GB. That comes out to about 17 cents a GB and that ain't bad considering the hard drive uses steel plates that will last indefinitely, especially you just use it occassionally for archiving.

  13.4.2006 17:00 #7

• JaguarGod

  What the hell is the point of a 200 gig disc??? The max bitrate those suckers can hadle is 25mbps combined. This means that you would be able to fit 18 hours of video on one disc!!! I am sure there will be a lot of movies that are 18 hours long.
  
  For data storage, it is not worth it. Hard Drives are better as long as you do as D40 mentioned and not abuse the Hard Drive. I have a PC that is 13 years old and there is not 1 bit of corrupt data on it... I have seen HDDs for as low as $45 for 200gigs and it was a western digital not some no name.
  
  Unless if they severely drop the prices on these discs, soon the format may fail for data backup and probably eventually up the cost of movies as well.

  13.4.2006 17:27 #8

• Cinnjerm

  Is there a reason to have 100gigs on a single disk, and if so, does this mean there going to start manufacturing more robust hard disk drives?

  13.4.2006 21:32 #9

• A_Klingon

  Quote: ... Is there a reason to have 100gigs on a single disk ...Certainly. And 200 gigs too.
  
  How many regular DVDs (or backups thereof) do you own? How many box sets do you own? How much shelf space do they all take up? How much do they weigh?
  
  Wouldn't it be really nice to archive, say, a dozen or so commercial movie dvds onto a single Blu-ray blank? How about fitting two whole complete television seasons on a single blank? (Four or five complete seasons on a 200-gigger).
  
  Not everything on Blu-ray has to be 1080p Hi-def MPEG-4 AVC with 118 different soundtracks.
  
  I don't know how many pounds of regular dvds I own, but I bet it would take a couple of Peruvian Llamas to cart them down the block. :-)

  13.4.2006 22:42 #10

• crowy

  Like BETA V VHS.
  BETA was better but VHS won:-(
  I Hope Blu Ray wins.
  

  14.4.2006 02:56 #11

• Cman

  With the Blu-ray DRM inherent in the design, I'm not sure I'll be dealing with this new format out of principle alone. I was around during the Betamax/VHS wars and knew alot of folks that got burned. Now, they're doing it again AND will prohibit "fair use" backups as well?
  
  They can all KMA!!

  14.4.2006 05:48 #12

• MrToast

  This is so gay, but as soon as the games can be backed up and the consoles cracked I will be there!
  
  Viva La Kojima!

  14.4.2006 06:31 #13

• shraven

  "This is so gay, but as soon as the games can be backed up and the consoles cracked I will be there!"
  
  Huh? You'll turn gay as soon as you can become a pirate?

  14.4.2006 11:34 #14

• ireland

  i thing ye guys will get a kick out of this
  
  Price war for HDD DVD recorders hits Taiwan market
  
  In the Taiwan market, a few local brands, such as Sampo, have taken the initiative and lowered the retail prices of their 250GB HDD (hard disk drive) DVD recorders by 40%, from NT$25,000 (US$769) to NT$15,000 (US$462). LG has followed suit by reducing the prices of its 250GB models by 38% from NT$29,900 (US$920) to NT$18,500 (US$569), according to local retail channels.
  
  read it all here
  http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13309

  14.4.2006 11:45 #15

• ZippyDSM

  ireland
  and why dont they do this everywhere?
  

  14.4.2006 13:02 #16

• A_Klingon

  Quote:i thing ye guys will get a kick out of this
  Price war for HDD DVD recorders hits Taiwan market Oh you betcha Larry! It's like I said, competition will drive the market.
  Quote:and why dont they do this everywhere? Oh, they will, zippy, they will!. Fact is, they can't WAIT to! Major bucks at stake -Blu-ray - the new kid on the block - "Get it while it's Hot!".
  
  We're gonna have Blu-ray drives and discs flying outta our yin-yangs. Of course, the sh-- will hit the fan as soon as unnanounced DRM restrictions start rearing their ugly heads, and consumers will realize - despite the bargain-basement price they got on their new Blu-ray burner - that they have not gotten quite all that they had hoped for.
  
  I don't care - I'm sitting this one out - unless you're wealthy you'd be a fool to do otherwise. Can't wait! The sooner Blu-ray comes out, the sooner it's (commercial movie equivalent) encryption is gonna get cracked! :-)

  14.4.2006 19:45 #17

• david100k

  now that media baby 200gb give it time and you can buy the player for 100 or 200 and media for 2$ in less then one year if it goes well

  15.4.2006 08:11 #18

• lottt11

  It is like it has been said it is a new war, in a new media that will take at 2 years to define the winner, an on the mean wild the consumer is the guinea pig or more well known as the sucker, Ms, Toshiba, RCA, all ready sided with HD-DVD so is going to be on top, it is never done in the consumer well fare, but the politic of what companies make more money and least of all the least amount legal fees, so it does not matter what we like better, but it is more then likely what is more convenient for then to sale, so mean wild this fad is going to be this 2 medias, like most times there are going to be some that buy one or the other, getting someone to pay for the cost development of there medias, it all come to this be a sucker or be smart consumer and wait it out, and as far as hard drives the fight has just begone the hard drives are getting smaller and faster or has anyone seen all of those micro drives competing with flash drives, now days you can get 6GB flash drive for $136.00 us no bigger then a wallet and for little more a micro drive that cost $ 196.00 27GB and with the same dimensions. So ass far having portability I would say flash or micro drives have it all, why?, most OS have no need for special soft ware needs. And as far durability of burned media it only has life of 4 years on the shelf, with no light, then it go's bye bye in that time, I have found that my back ups in PDA and CDRW have been lost in that span of time so for durability use magnetic media it last longer, and yes I was one of dose stupid fools who purchased a PDA an then found my self having to by CDRW 6 month later, well that is my 2 cent's worth.

  16.4.2006 00:12 #19