Pioneer and Philips presenting dual-layer drives at CeBIT

March 19, 2004

At the CeBIT 2004 in Hannover, the first companies are presenting their dual layer DVD burners. Heise reports about the latest developments and what is presented from manufacturers like Philips, BenQ, Pioneer or LiteOn.

For DVD burners two new developments are of interest at the CeBIT. On one hand side, Philips and Pioneer present dual layer versions of their DVD+R and DVD-R with about 8.5 GB capacity. Philips and BenQ are planning a release of their first drive for April, writing at DVD+R9 with 2.4x and DVD+R with 8x. First samples of DVD+R9 were already presented during CeBIT. At least playback of these discs worked, but during burning a special version of Nero still crashed. The first manufacturers named for DVD+R9 were Verbatim and Ricoh.

New drives with recording speeds of 16x for DVD+R, 8x for DVD-R and 2,4x for DVD+R9 from Philips and BenQ are expected for July. Unlike current drives, recording speed will not be raised in steps from 6x to 8x (CLV), but seamlessly increased from 6x to 16x (CAV). Higher speeds will not be expected because of high rotations of 10,000 rpm.

The Taiwanese drive manufacturer LiteOn has a similar
roadmap. A writer with 8x for DVD±R and 2.4x for DVD+R9 is expected in April, while the 16x version will probably be out in June. LiteOn also confirmed the cooperation with Sony, so we can expect the DRU-700A rom Sony to be identical with the upcoming LiteOn drive. By this cooperation LiteOn does not have to spend the enormous licensing costs and Sony gets their profit from a cheap supply of drives.

And last not least, Pioneer also climbs the DVD+R9 train. So their next burner (probably DVR-A08) will write DVD+R9 at 2.4x and DVD±R at 16x and it is expected to be out in July. Because of difficulties to supply 16x DVD+R at this time from Verbatim, Pioneer will write to some elected 8x media at 16x. That will be the first time that Pioneer will not take care of specifiactions.

The first dual layer DVD-R will probably not be out before the end of this year. During CeBIT, Pioneer presented a prototype that was written at 2x. But it's possible that first retail products will already be capable of 4x speed. They don't want to let the gap to the DVD+RW alliance grow any further.

Nice to hear that the DVD Forum will finally raise their development speed to not lag so much behind the DVD+RW alliance. But they need to work a little faster as the DVD+RW people are way ahead.

But we can start our bets if we will again be beta testers for the new hardware. I very much doubt that these new devices won't cause trouble in the beginning.

Again you should have a look at our Recording Hardware Forum, if you like to discuss what's going on with DVD recorders at the CeBIT.

Source: Heise.de