DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

Sony has announced double-layer DVD burners.
There's no doubt to whom the burners will appeal. With 8.5GB of data on a single disc, there's plenty of room for archiving files, but more importantly it represents about four hours of DVD video - enough to record most films to a single disc.

The internal DRU-700A and external USB2 or FireWire DRX-700UL will launch with dual-layer recording speeds of 2.4X as well as up to 8X DVDR, 4X DVDRW, 40X CD-R and 24X CD-RW recording.

'Double layer recording is the next milestone in DVD technology,' said Wolfgang Schlichting, research director for removable storage at IDC. 'Sony's double layer drives put twice the recording power in the hands of the consumer, reducing the need to handle multiple discs when working on new storage-intensive applications.'

The discs will undoubtedly be more expensive than a standard DVD disc - at least initially - as they are a deal more demanding to manufacture. Each disc has two layers that are written to from the same side with the burner's laser focussed at different lengths. The top layer has to be transparent enough both for the laser to pass through and back in order to write to and read from the bottom layer. Yet the top layer must be dense enough to be written to and read from itself.

Passing between lasers shouldn't result in any interruption if, say, you are watching a film. At a recent press briefing by the DVD Alliance - supporter of the +R format which Sony uses - there were a few seconds pause as the laser swapped layers. But we were told that the average burner's buffer memory of 2MB would be enough to bridge this for both reading and writing.

The burners also come with AHEAD Nero software for CD and DVD burning. The internal drive will be available in May and the external in June of this year, costing $230 for the internal and $330 for the external. UK pricing is not yet known.

Bring on the Pioneer Dual layers burners

Neanderthal

iTrader: (6)

Then they'll moan about people pirating more films.......

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

No doubt, probably a fat tax on DVD recordables too.

lightning101

Pioneer A06 and A07 can be modded to write dual layer DVD's and the latest ones are 16 speed. The blank DVD's though are (£6.80) each.

MrShades

A06 and A07 CANNOT be modded to write dual-layer - you need to wait for the A09 before the Pioneer range will support dual layer DVD-R. Due around the end of this year...

There was some conjecture initially that, as a 'modded' A06 had been demonstrated writing dual-layer disks, that this would be a simple mod for existing A06/A07 owners. This is not the case, as the A06 hardware was extensively modded (as well as the firmware) to get it to work.

A08 will be a speed increase, and will not support dual-layer either.

Shades

lightning101

Pioneer demonstrated dual layer DVD-R writing (at 2x) using modified DVR-A06 at CES. They demonstrated it by putting 100Mb of video on each layer (200mb total) and having it run on a standalone DVD Player (Pioneer DV464). they made chapter 1-3 on layer 0 and 4-6 on layer 1 and demonstrated rapid switch between layers. They said although dual layer DVD-R format isn't finalized it should be playable on most standalone DVD players and DVD-Rom drives already in circulation.

Interesting part in all this is, the A06 unit they used was only modified via firmware, they claim no hardware change was made from regular A06. Also they have no plans to release modified firmware, yet.

MrShades

lightning101 - If you're going to quote someone elses text, please mention that you have done so..... RPC1.ORG by any chance?

Read further down that page my friend...........

Don't expect to see A06/A07 drives easily upgraded to DL - and posting that you can do it (now) is pretty misleading. If you want to burn DL now, you CANNOT use a Pioneer drive to do so.

IMO for various reasons, PCE will probably enjoy the fact that rumours have been spread that A06/A07 drives WILL be capable of taking a firmware UG to convert to DL - as it will stop the owners migrating to other manufs before PCE have their drive available at the end of the year. Loe and behold, when the A09 is available, the A06/A07 upgrade rumour will be properly extinguished by them.

lightning101

Wasn't trying to be smart - was pretty unlikely I was at CES, just repeating what I had read not whether I though it possible or not - I have A07 drive and had been searching for firmware upgrades. This is on firmware.org by the way. It may be conjecture, but what makes you so sure ?