TDK Reveals Blu-ray Media Rated at 6X Write Speeds

[marzetta7]

Some interesting news...

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3126&ref=y

TDK takes Blu-ray to 3 times the current media speed

With the bulk of Blu-ray writers launching at 2x write speeds, a higher speed media seems a little premature. However, TDK brought Blu-ray media rated at 6x to the 8th Annual Data Storage Expo in Japan and expects to launch media rated at 4x before the end of 2006.

The 6x media is a single layer 25GB Blu-ray disc which probably won't reap benefits until 6x drives come out. We are guessing we won't see 6x drives until at least later this year or early 2007 given the launch trends of previous optical standards.

TDK was also showing off 100GB Blu-ray media which we reported on back in April. The 100GB media uses a 4-layer process which has spacer layers between. TDK's latest trend graph shows a maximum speed of 4x for 100GB media.

TDK did again hint at 200GB media on that same trend graph which also shows a 6x write speed. The 200GB media is an 8-layer media on a single side. We probably won't see that density for another year or two so we’ll have to be satisfied with the current 25GB/50GB capacities.