To sweeten the pot even more, Hitachi says the discs are compatible with existing Blu-ray players and drives after an easy firmware update.
Hitachi says they are now working on "improving the signal quality of its quad-layer technology" so that it can be ready to hit the market soon. The company also boasted that they were working on a eight-layer Blu-ray disc capable of storing 200GB of data.
What is left to be pondered is how expensive these discs will cost to manufacture. Movie studios may just opt to release their titles over two standard Blu-ray discs than invest in new expensive equipment necessary for these larger capacity discs.
This is not the first time recently that we have heard of improved capacity on optical media. In March, New Medium Enterprises developed a four-layer DVD it called the Versatile Multilayer Disc (VMD) that is capable of storing 20GB of data, double the current DVD-9.
HD DVD is also in the process of approving a new triple-layer disc capable of storing 51 GB of data, one GB more than current Blu-ray discs.
Should be interesting to see how these technologies continue to improve as well as manufacturing costs.
Source:
Dailytech
Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 5 Oct 2007 8:53
