With the “format war” between HD DVD and Blu-ray still in its opening rounds, next-generation DVD burners are only starting to hit the upper echelons of the personal computing market. Now, Toshiba has announced what looks to be the first notebook computer to sport a HD DVD-R drive, its Qosmio G30/97A (Japanese), an upgrade to its Qosmio G30 multimedia notebook systems.
Tag Archive: DVD-R
Verbatim Blu-Ray, HD DVD Media Set For July
Verbatim announced yesterday that it will begin shipping 25 GB 2x recordable and rewriteable Blu-ray media beginning in July
Toshiba Gets Dual-Layer Crazy with HD
Toshiba today continued its push forward against Sony’s Blu-ray to be the king of next generation optical discs as it announced a 30GB dual-layer HD DVD-R disc. The company plans to improve on the specifications of the disc before bringing a HD DVD recorder to market next spring. The dual-layer HD DVD-R disc is based on the same disc structure as current DVD discs, HD DVD-ROM discs (read-only), and HD DVD-RW discs (rewritable): back-to-back bonding of two 0.6 millimeter-thick substrates. The new disc also shares key manufacturing processes with DVD-R: use of an organic dye as the data storage medium; and a spin-coating process for depositing the dye. Toshiba will work with disc manufacturers to verify compatibility of HD DVD-R discs in testing in mid-October.
Verbatim Releases 16X DVD-R
Verbatim(R) Corporation announced today that it will begin shipping 1-16x speed DVD-R media later this month. With the ability to record video, photos, music or data files at about 21 MB/sec, users will be able to fill an entire 4.7GB disc to capacity in about six minutes. To ensure broad compatibility, Verbatim 1-16x speed DVD-R discs are compliant with the DVD Forum’s 16x DVD-R Specifications. Leading drive manufacturers such as BenQ, Hitachi-LG Data Storage, Lite-On, NEC, Plextor, Sony and others have announced 16x DVD-R compatible drives. The new write-once media, which can be used at all recording speeds between 1x and 16x, is also backward compatible with existing DVD recorders and 1-8x DVD-R burners when appropriate firmware upgrades are installed.

