Princeton (NJ) - Panasonic has announced that it is developing a new Blu-ray Disc drive that can write to single and dual-layer discs at a max speed of 18 MB/s.

According to Panasonic, at maximum speed, the BD drive could write a full 50 GB dual-layer Blu-ray Disc in less than 45 minutes, and a 25 GB BD-R in under 25 minutes.

The breakthrough is a new laser diode that optimizes laser quality, and can burn data at a faster rate without excess power consumption.  The drive's output will reportedly be about 130 mW.

Earlier this year, Panasonic announced development of BD-R discs that support writing speeds of 4x, which are planned to be available later this month.

Hitachi LG Data Storage is already beating Panasonic to the punch, though, with its upcoming GGW-H20L BD burner to support 6x writing speeds (27 MB/sec).  The new drive from Panasonic, however, will still be the fastest offering for burning BD-R DL discs.

Question about blu-ray

Jul 03, 2007 11:31     

So, it's just that simple to burn blue ray? To anyone that knows the tech please inform. Is there a blu-ray video format for movie files, or could one put mpeg on a blu-ray dissk and yield spectacular video quality. I doubt it is this easy, please let me know.
robert report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

RE: Question about bluray.

Jul 03, 2007 11:56     

Yes, it is that simple to burn blu-ray. No, there isn't a "blu-ray video format" but there are Hi def video encoders and formats, that can be used on blu-ray and HD DVD. No, you can't put a SD mpeg and then get "spectacular video quality"
Schrovan report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Blu-Ray supports many formats

Jul 05, 2007 09:53     

You can use MPEG2, H.264 (aka MPEG4 AVC), or VC-1. There are plenty of mastering programs out that will let you burn a video to a BD. Or, you can put really anything on it and play it with a PC or compatible player. Simply burning to Blu-Ray will not up the quality, though.
steevee report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Blu-Ray just holds more...

Jul 11, 2007 19:39     

It just holds more Robert. So the video or audio can be of higher quality and still fit on the disc. Putting an SD video on a Blu-Ray disc would not change its quality but you could put a lot more on it as opposed to a regular DVD or VCD. Same goes for HDDVD; it is just a DVD that holds more data...
NutZ report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0