According to the Blu-ray Disc specification 1x speed is defined as 36Mbps (4.5MB/s) and the first-generation drives that have been announced so far support 2x read/write speed. At 2x speed it should take about 1 hour and 30 minutes to burn 50GB. From what I've read there should be 4x drives on the market in 2007, which should cut the time in half. If we assume that the upper limit for disc rotation speed is 10,000 RPM then 12x speed at the outer diameter should be possible in the future. When it comes to adding more layers, it will take some time for them to get media with more layers ready for mass-production, but they are working on 4 layers (100GB) for 2007. Finally, re-writeable discs are now called BD-RE for re-recordable.
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