Petteri Pyyny
3 Oct 2003 13:32
Philips and Mitsubishi Kagaku Media have managed to achieve something that most people who knew something about technical specifications of DVD discs had considered to be, not impossible, but too expensive and too complicated to develop.
Companies jointly announced today that they've managed to create a dual layer DVD+R disc and that its specifications should be ready by the end of the year. Companies said that the driving force behind the development was to create a dual layer disc that would be as much compatible as possible with existing stand-alone DVD players and DVD-ROM drives.
What does this mean then? It means basically that once these discs and burners supporting these discs hit the market -- with acceptable price tag, software tools meant for shrinking DVD-Video discs to fit on one single-layer DVDR disc become virtually useless. It means that any commercial DVD-Video disc, including DVD-9 discs, will fit to one blank disc without re-encoding the video or stripping out unwanted material from the disc. Couple of things have to be noted: current DVD+R recorders wont be able to burn dual layer discs and all existing DVD-ROM, DVD-R and DVD+R drives should be able to read these dual layer discs with no problems at all.
Philips says that first recorders and discs will be available sometime in 2004. This also puts huge pressure to DVD Forum, which supports the competing DVD-R format, to develop dual layer solution for DVD-R discs as well.
More information:
Forbes.com
DVDRW.com