Sony Shipping 50 GB Blu-ray Media

If you must use the latest and greatest, brace yourself: Sony has begun shipping dual-layer, write-once 50 GB Blu-ray media in the United States.

Sony Electronics announced today that is has begun shipping 50 GB Blu-ray media in the United States. The current media are write-once technology; Sony says it plans to ship rewritable Blu-ray media later this year.

“The arrival of 50 GB Blu-ray Disc media is an important milestone in the evolution of this new format,” said Mike Lucas, Sony Electronics’ director of marketing for Media and Application Solutions Division, in a statement. “The capacity represents more than four hours of HD quality video, at a 24 Mbps transfer rate, allowing users to take full advantage of Sony’s Blu-ray Disc burners and VAIO desktop and notebook computers.”

Each 50 GB disk carries a suggested retail price of about $48, so users there are more efficient ways to store media and data on a cost-per-megabyte basis, including “plain jane” 25 GB Blu-ray media. But who are we to complain? If Sony wants a revolution, they have to be willing to burn a few discs.