Over at PC Pro they tell us that dual layer drives are already available and soon 16X burners will hit the market. When that happens, in their opinion, we will more or less be at the end of the road for DVD drives which will be the segue for next generation devices. Here is what Andrew Wyllie, product manager of NEC's Business Equipment Division, has to say about it.
Next year - June, according to Wyllie - will see the inauguration of the next generation of optical storage technology: blue laser-based drives. As with the -R and +R formats, there's going to be a battle over this. There are two formats, both based on blue laser technology. Blu-Ray offers discs with up to 27GB a layer and supported by Hitachi, LG, Matsushita, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, and Thomson. The alternative is HD-DVD, developed by Toshiba and NEC, and offering up to 15GB per layer. It may come as little surprise that Wyllie is backing the HD-DVD format, despite the commoditising powers of box builders such as Sony in the other camp. 'No-one would touch Blu-Ray,' he says. And he has his reasons. 'This will be a fight,' he says, 'But it will be the movie studios that will decide.' |
Thanks to GristyMcFisty for alerting us to the story. Take some time and read the whole thing. But, do you agree, has the DVD optical drive burner reached the end of it's rope? Or, are there still some tricks up the sleeves of engineers good enough to have us coming back for newer, superior drives?
Source: PC Pro
