Start with the fact that Toshiba has submitted a triple-layer, 51GB HD DVD-ROM disc to the standard’s overseer in the hope the technology will be adopted as a standard by the end of the year. If approved, it allow the format to exceed the 50GB storage capacity of rival medium Blu-ray Disc. 

The HD DVD standard currently defines single- and dual-layer discs capable of holding 15GB and 30GB of data, respectively. That’s plenty, say the format’s supporters, for a movie encoded in 1080p HD resolution and a stack of extras.

Today’s HD DVD players will be incapable of reading the new disc, which is something of a problem for early adopters, who will presumably have to buy new kit. Toshiba last week positioned the new disc as an ‘extended capacity, high-end option’. Personally I do not think that is the way we will go. We will, instead, make an extraordinary leap.

While Toshiba has publicly announced its achievement of developing a triple-layer HD DVD-ROM (read only) disc with a capacity of 51 gigabytes, Ritek — a much small player in this area but much respected — showed behind closed doors at the CES show that it has not only been able to produce a three-layer and four-layer HD optical discs, but is has successfully designed HD media with a full 10 layers.

The company says that its multi-layer process can be applied to both HD DVD and Blu-ray formats.

Which gives you the 150GB disk. What would that be used for? I simply have no idea although every episode of Law and Order would be a good start. Just lead me to it.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 2:24 pm under Technology.

Read more entries by Gareth Powell.
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