DVD Forum green lights three-layer 51Gb HD-DVD
The DVD Forum, the group behind the technology for DVD and HD-DVD has gone ahead and approved a proposal by HD-DVD spearhead Toshiba to produce a triple layered 51Gb HD-DVD disc. This move is a blatant show of power towards the current capacity of Blu-ray being only capable of 50Gb. Even format wars don't appear to be safe from the likes of the "mine's bigger than yours" defense.
Toshiba had announced the three-layer disc to its partners back in January, but it was only just formally submitted to the DVD Forum in April and just now approved for production.
With current HD-DVD standards, you have your 15Gb and 30Gb varieties with the single-layer and dual-layer structures currently available. Adding a third layer would essentially only amount to 45Gb, 5Gb shy of Blu-ray, so Toshiba pressed its workers to get an extra 2Gb per layer out of their new proposed structure. This is how they achieved the 51Gb storage space capability.
Toshiba says that only a Limited number of early adopters should be affected by this as the market isn't wholly saturated with HD-DVD players. There are no talks as to when these discs will actually become available or when we can expect the players to make an appearance.
