While taking a rare break at my workstation this morning, I was in instant messaging range of Torsten Puellen of CD Freaks. Good thing, he found an article at C|Net that I had dismissed earlier. It appeared the article was about the ongoing battle between the +/- camps and which is superior, so I didn't read it. Yet, Torsten did and mentioned that within the article were some nuggets of information that might be of interest. Once read, the whole article is very good information for us that are curious about dual layer writing technology.
We will see 2.4x recorders as early as this spring and it seems the plus camp of HP, Phillips and Dell is going to market first. Andy Parsons, senior vice president in the business solutions division of Pioneer Electronics USA and Hans Driessen, global communications manager for Philips' Optical Storage division, made a few statements in the C|Net article that we found very interesting.
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Fully recording an 8.5GB dual-layer disc could increase the time needed to make a recording, according to Parsons. "That's what we're thinking about now," he said. "One must be careful not to rush things to market. The dual-layer DVD+R specification does not require the entire disc to be recorded. Philips' Driessen said that if one layer of a dual-layer DVD+R has a recorded signal at a particular point on the disc, the other layer must have a matching signal; otherwise, a player may detect an error. For example, if one layer has 4GBs of data recorded, the other layer must have 4GB as well. But he said blank space may be left at the edge of the DVD without any playback problems. Arranging for both layers to be recorded in equal amounts is relatively easy in the case of data files of a known size, Driessen said. When a user records a television broadcast of unknown length, however, the drive may need to add "dummy" data in order for the disc to be readable in DVD players. This could mean a finalization process of up to 25 minutes, Driessen said. "Future write speed improvements (such as 4x) will reduce this finalization time," he said. |
The article also delves into other technical and compatability challenges that present themselves with a burner that can write to two layers. DVD's that we purchase with a pre-recorded movie are pressed or stamped to create the pits and lands. Not as complex a task as this new burning hardware faces it seems.
You may want to go C|Net and read the entire article to learn more about this fascinating step in the evolution of optical burners. There is quite a bit of good information that can be gleened from this story. It is amazing the technology that we are about to be presented with. Sometimes, maybe we take it for granted what these engineers must do to bring us such products.
Source: C|Net
