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