Ricoh develops 8 layer 200GB optical disc

November 27, 2005

According
to a story over at New Launches, it seems Ricoh has been busy and along with help
from Tohoku University, figured a way to increase the amount of recordable
layers in an optical disc to eight. Not only that, while they were at it, they
put quite a bit of data on each layer for a total capacity of 200 gigabytes.
Let's see, 25GB a layer, can we guess what color the laser is?

Ricoh
Co. has developed technology that paves the way for the commercialization
as early as 2008 of a 200-gigabyte optical disc, which could store 18
hours of high-definition television programming. This huge leap forward in
recording capacity from the current single-layer DVD's 4.7GB is made
possible by increasing the number of data recording layers to eight.

Even next-generation DVDs, such as Blu-ray
discs and HD DVDs, have only two data recording layers because having more
normally results in light reflected from other layers interfering with
reading. The new technology sidesteps this by filtering out the offending
light through the use of a special glass plate developed by Photonic
Lattice Inc., which was set up to commercialize technology developed at
Tohoku University.

This is a tad bit interesting, as the story indicates
that with Blu-ray technology, there is/was a problem producing a disc with
more than two layers! Until now, we have been led to believe that both Blu-ray
and HD-DVD were poised to produce discs with many layers. Interestingly,
this new process from Ricoh uses an optical head that reportedly shares the
"same basic design" of both HD-DVD and Blu-ray and can be adapted to either
standard.

Source: New Launches