Pony Canyon (Japan) bringing world's first HYBRID BD/DVD discs

[jd213]

http://av.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20081212/pony.htm (you can use a translation service like Google Translate, although there's not much information)

This "Code Blue" (fitting, eh?) Japanese rescue drama series will be released in a version with new Hybrid BD/DVD discs. They will be single layer BDs with a DVD layer on the same side. A DVD-only version will also be released.

Not sure if these will catch on, but they will most likely be more reliable than the HD DVD combo discs since the Blu-ray Hybrid discs are single-sided wheras the HD DVD combos were flippers (there were also single-sided versions with the HD DVD and DVD layers on the same side, but they were limited to one 15GB HD DVD layer and I believe only the Freedom anime was released like this).

If they do catch on though, I just hope that studios don't misuse them. Since it appears at this point that only a BD25 layer can be used, it wouldn't be a good thing if a long movie + extras was crammed onto the single BD25 layer.