Sharp (yes Sharp, I was surprised too) has developed an improved version of the current technology used to read and write Blu-ray discs. By changing the way the discs are made and improving the laser, Sharp has been able to increase the maximum capacity of the Blu-ray disc to 75GB and 100GB, from the current standard of 50GB.
What they’re doing is actually really complicated, but the gist of it is that they are changing the laser used to read the disc, and replacing the coating with a new aluminum oxynitride one instead of the old dielectric film. This will allow for the use of discs with three and four layers, as opposed to the standard two.
When will we see this new tech? It’s still unclear at this time. Sharp is currently working to get their upgrades approved by the Blu-ray Disc Association. We’ll let you know when we know more, but at this point there’s no ETA.
[via Blu-ray.com and Engadget]
Interesting, this has potential :D
God! Then external hard-drive has to drop their retail price now! One day in the future, I believe we will have more small and large usb drive and huge storage blu-ray RW drive.
G
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Maybe in another ten years when people have decided that their blu-ray collection just isn’t offering them the definition and clarity they desire, they’ll upgrade their old Blu-Ray players for one of the new Super High Definition disc format players, which might utilize a disc type similar to what Sharp is announcing. That is, provided that they can get there before content delivery systems outmode the permanent storage of feature films on removable discs. I have a feeling that hard drive technology is advancing at such a pace that optical drive technology won’t be able to keep up. I’d love to get my movies cheaper and faster by downloading them and storing them on external hard drives which can be plugged into a variety of media playing devices. I’d like to see DRM done away with, because it cramps innovation. Look at how many MP3 players there are on the market, and compare that to how many Apple AAC Protected Audio players there are.