Panasonic said it will begin shipping its previously announced 6x BD-R media on September 10. The discs will be available in 25 GB and 50 GB flavors and will be compatible with to the Blu-ray Disc Recordable Format v 1.3.

6X translates to a data transfer rate of 6 x 36 Mb/s or a total of 216 Mb/s (27 MB/s).  Compared to previous optical media, the media are substantially faster than 16x DVDs, which achieved 169 Mb/s (21.1 MB/s) and 48X CDs that offered a maximum transfer rate of 56 Mb/s (7 MB/s).