Taiyo Yuden, Mitsubishi and Maxell have all announced new Blu-ray discs that use an organic dye for recording, according to three Japanese news sources. The discs announced are all 25GB BD-R single layer, with 1x to 2x write speed.
The advantages of using organic dye include a simpler manufacturing process and the ability to replicate using existing CD and DVD coating facilities, thus doing away with high cost of building new production lines specifically for Blu-ray disc. Instead, existing CD-R and DVD-R coating facilities just need minor adjustments, thus making it possible to mass produce Blu-ray discs at low cost.
Going by this tech.co.uk report, Sony has recently unveiled smaller low cost Blu-ray laser models, which also make them useful for 9.5mm laptop drives. This module features read & write capability and will handle dual-layer Blu-ray discs as well as these organic discs.
Thanks to koba for letting us know about these three Japanese press releases (Mitsubishi, Taiyo Yuden and Maxell). koba added: These discs will use an organic dye for recording. They are the first of this type worldwide. Since these discs will use an organic dye, a recorder or writer has to be used which is capable of writing to these discs. This means that some older Recorders and writers will not work with these discs. The good thing however is that with the use of this new organic dye production cost and quantity should get better.
