Brainspark works on tech. to triple blue/red laser disc capacity

April 1, 2006

Up until now, the main method of adding capacity to optical discs is to decrease the track pitch as well as decrease the size of the pits to pack more on the disc. Other companies have tried using holographic and multi-layer discs to vastly increase capacity. However, the main drawback with each new development is that each requires new media, which means a hefty cost in creating new production lines to create the media as what Blu-ray has had to face.

Brainspark has developed a different method of increasing the capacity of media by exploiting the polarisation element used in the current DVD format, which is currently not being used for encoding data on the disc. Their new method is called Polar High-definition DVD (PH-DVD) technology. By utilising this, it is possible to increase both the capacity and transfer rate of existing red and blue laser media by up to three times. For example, a dual-layer Blu-ray disc would have a potential capacity of over 100GB using PH-DVD technology.

As this technology would only involve creating new drives, this means that the technology could be brought to the market within a very short period and consumers will not have to worry about forking out on new expensive media. However, it is unclear yet if they have any prototypes in development at this time, let alone a predicated launch period.

The PH-DVD format can be applied as a modification to increase the data read rate and capacity of any of the competing blue laser formats (such as Sony Blu-Ray and Toshiba HD-DVD). Moreover, the Polarizonics Technology may provide for a red-laser capability to support HD content. Thus, with the potential for over 100GB discs, this innovation is of particular importance for satisfying the coming demands of increased disc capacity of HD video content of movies and video games. Importantly Polarizonics Technology requires no change in the disc structure itself, and present mass replication equipment can be used without modification or additional costs. Hence, PT can be brought to market within a very short time scale. The PH-DVD format also introduces a new hardware level suppression of the possibility of unlicensed replication piracy.

The full press release can be read here.

If this company succeeds in creating successful products, it will have a significant advantage in that one can use existing media and get up to three times the capacity out of it. However, there are other factors to consider also, such as how reliable the data will be when stored in the new way, considering that the media is designed for specific recording equipment.

One other thing to note is that this is not the first time a company has attempted to develop hardware to store more data on existing media. For example, Sanyo has already developed HD-Burn technology to fit up to 1.4GB of data on a standard CD-R/RW disc. However, unlike Brainspark's technology, HD-Burn creates smaller pits to double the disc capacity. Optoride already offers several DVD writers that features HD-Burn technology.

Source: SourceWire - Press