100 GB Blu-Ray Disks Will Work in Existing Drives

By Nathan Statz

Month Date, 2007: Hitachi has unveiled quad layer Blu-Ray disks with a storage capacity of 100 GB, more then doubling the previous best of 50 GB.

Thanks to an endless supply of research dollars from both camps, advancement has been coming thick and fast in the HD DvD versus Blu-Ray format war. Blu-Ray had originally announced an industry high capacity of 50 GB Blu-Ray optical storage disks, but HD DvD hit back with an approved format capacity of 51 GB. Thanks to Hitachi, Blu-Ray has once again regained the lead with the 100 GB disks that were announced at Createc in Japan.

The interesting thing about the 100 GB disk varieties is that they will work in existing players, meaning the capacity has been doubled but the technology required to read the disks hasn’t been altered. This is good news for owners of standalone Blu-Ray drives as there’s no firmware updates or patching required to be able to handle the new 100 GB varieties.

The new 100 GB disks will hit mass production as soon as signal strength is stabilised. Hitachi is currently researching eight layer Blu-Ray disks to produce a 200 GB version of the technology.

Comment on this story.