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Toshiba Has HD-DVD-R Ready for Mass Production
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By Iulia Pascanu
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The time has come for Toshiba and Nec, the main backers of HD-DVDformat to announce they're ready for write-once HD-DVD-R discmass production.
Their discs can store 15 GB of data, and should be available forthe consumers in the first half of the next year, by the sametime that HD-DVD recorders and PC drives will be also on themarket.
As we all know, HD-DVD fights in a tight competition with Blu-ray for the "format of the future" title, that also means amultibillion dollar market as a price for the winner.
Similar blue laser technology stays at the core of both formats,as the blue laser has a shorter wavelength than the red lasersused in current DVD equipment, allowing discs to store data athigher densities needed for high-definition TV and movies.
The advantage that HD-DVD-R disc has over its main competitor,the Blu-ray disc is it has the same disc structure as theclassic DVD and thus can be manufactured by using the sameproduction lines. This, for the DVD manufacturers, means theycan start HD-DVD-R mass production at full speed, right away,with not much additional cost. A replacement stamper is neededof course and the old dye must be replaced with blue-lightsensitive, resin dye. The new dye was developed in a jointproject of Hayashibara Biochemical Laboratories, MitsubishiKagaku Media/Verbatim and Toshiba Corporation.
But at the same time, Blu-ray competitor has its own advantages,like superior storing capacity. Toshiba claims it works at thisaspect also, but moving from single-layer discs that are writtenat 1x speed, to dual-layer 30GB discs could take several years,its spokespersons said. Toshiba promised to introduce 20GBHD-DVD-RW discs by this time next year.
So far, the Blu-ray Disc Association and the HD DVD PromotionGroup have refused to compromise to a unified hybrid format forthe future DVD.
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