According to a report at CIO, Toshiba and Memory-Tech have developed a single sided, three-layer optical disc, that can be read by both DVD and HD-DVD players.
| The two companies previously developed a two-layer optical disc that can store both DVD and HD DVD, and commercial content on such discs is already on sale in Japan. The addition of a third layer means more standard or high-definition content can be recorded on the disc. Each layer is capable of storing about two hours of standard and four hours of high-definition content, the latter assuming the MPEG4 AVC compression is used. That means about four hours of SD and HD content can be stored if two layers are used for DVD and one layer for HD DVD. |
Toshiba hopes to win approval from the DVD Forum by the end of this year, which will be necessary before the hybrid disc can be commercialized.
*Update*
BetaNews has just put up a much more informative report, here is a
snippet:
According to Toshiba, the new specification will include one layer
devoted to HD DVD, a second to DVD, and a third layer which can be apportioned
to either format, enabling dual-layer HD DVD (30 GB) or dual-layer DVD-9 (8.5
GB).
<and>
A small-print notice appearing toward the bottom of the specifications
sheet for Toshiba's HD-A1 HD DVD player now conspicuously
reads, "Some Twin Format Discs may not be compatible with all players."
Although it may take several more months for the new format to be
formally adopted by the DVD Forum, and more months afterwards for manufacturers
to retool, some customers may find themselves upgrading their HD DVD player's
system firmware to accommodate the dual-layer DVD-9 format. The HD-A1 and HD-XA1
currently support double-sided DVD-RAM, but Toshiba does not list DVD-9 by name
for video playback.
Source: Various
