Petteri Pyyny
15 Oct 2001 4:05
Japanese electronics giant Matsushita Electric Inc (which owns brands like Panasonic) unveiled today a recordable digital versatile disc (read: DVD) that can store up to whopping 50GB of data per side. Current DVDs can store appx. 5GB of data per side.
Technology is based on blue-light lasers instead of regular red-light lasers. Matsushita's rival Sony released its own DVR-Blue technology in January that can store up to 22.5GB of data per side and is also based on blue-light laser.
Schedule for commercial debut is not released, but it is expected that first recorders/players will become available in 2003 when Japan finally shifts to digital TV.