Mitsubishi today said it would begin selling recordable dual-layer, 30GB HD DVD media late next month, just after Toshiba ships the world's first consumer PVR to support HD DVD-R. The disc maker said it will offer a 30GB dual-layer product.

The single-sided HD DVD-R DL can hold 150 minutes' of HD content encoded at a 24Mbps playback rate, Mistubishi said. It stressed the product's use of high-sensitivity dye for accurate recording on both the near-side and inner storage layers. The media support the AACS copy-protection technology mandated by the HD DVD standard - as does Blu-ray Disc, for that matter.

Last month, Mitsubishi said it would ship single-layer, 15GB HD DVD-R media on 5 July. It's got HD DVD-RW media waiting in the wings for the DVD Forum to finalise and ratify the format as a standard.

Mitsubishi owns Verbatim, so it's a good bet the latter will offer the 15GB and 30GB HD DVD-R discs in due course. ®