PCWorld reports that both Sharp and Mitsubishi Electric have developed new higher-power laser diodes that should enable drive producers to produce 4x DVD writers.
These new drives would need about 14 minutes to fill an entire 4,7 GB DVD. One of the main issues was to find a powerfull laser that would also have a long life time.
Power was not the only barrier to be overcome before the companies could begin selling the devices commercially, says Tetsuya Yagi, manager of Mitsubishi Electric's high-power optical device group. |
Higher-power laser diodes often have very short lives and both companies had to work on extending their life so that they would not burn out after a few hours, days, or weeks of use, he says. The laser diode produced by Yagi's group has a life of around 4,000 hours, he says.
Both companies are about to begin shipping samples of the higher-power laser diodes, Sharp for $22 and Mitsubishi Electric for $37, and they expect to begin commercial production in May or June.
The next step in rewritable DVD drives, the jump to 6X models, is not expected until sometime in 2003. Okay, said it before and will say it again, give us a good DVD-R format first !!!!
Source: PCworld.com
