Toshiba Corporation and NEC Corporation today jointly proposed to the DVD Forum a next-generation, high-capacity, blue-laser DVD format that will allow manufacturers to continue to use existing DVD plant and equipment, thereby minimizing the investment required for the transition to next-generation DVD players and drives.
The format proposed by Toshiba and NEC covers both read-only discs that are used to distribute high-definition movies, and read-and-write discs. The format utilizes a short wavelength blue laser and the same disc technology used in current DVDs: back-to-back bonding of two 0.6mm-thick, 120mm discs.
The proposed format increases the capacity of read-only discs to 15 GB for a single-sided, single-layer disc, and to 30 GB for a single-sided, dual-layer disc, as well as increasing the capacity of read-and-write discs, which currently are single-sided with a single-layer, to 20 GB. Today’s single-sided, dual-layer, read-only discs have a capacity of 8.5 GB, while read-and-write discs (single-sided, single-layer only) can store up to 4.7 GB of data. The increased capacity of the proposed format is achieved by employing a blue laser, and by utilizing the two companies’ new signal processing and phase-change media recording technologies.
In addition, Toshiba and NEC will shortly propose a 40GB single-sided, dual-layer, read-and-write disc to the DVD Forum.
Visit Toshiba’s Website at www.toshiba.co.jp/index.html or NEC at www.nec.com for complete specs.
