The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Pioneer's 500GB Blu-ray disc

400GB discs are so last month

Pioneer launched a 400GB Blu-ray disc just last month, but the firm’s already smashed its own capacity ceiling by unveiling a 500GB successor.

The latest disc tops the 400GB disc’s measly 16 layers by adding a further four layers, resulting in 20 layers each with a 25GB capacity.

Brendan Sheridan, Multimedia Division Product Manager at Pioneer, said that 25GB and 50GB Blu-ray discs might be enough for current demands, but that Pioneer envisages the need for “far greater capacities as HD streaming in particular becomes commonplace and users build larger files of digital content”.

It was thought that ‘crosstalk’ between the separate layers on the disc could cause problems, but Pioneer seems to have the issue licked. Because the firm’s in talks with the Blu-ray Disc Association to make the multi-layered method – which Sheridan said is compatible with Blu-ray devices – a standard for the format.

Sadly, the 500GB disc is currently only at the prototype stage.

Latest Comments

Aw-right!

Storage flamewar! 3, 2, 1 - fight!

Seriously, people... I know this is the internet, but some things just aren't worth fighting about.

0
0

@TimM

Aaah nice to see you are still bitter about HD-DVD demise and making the same old pro HD-DVD comments. As AC pointed out the 51gb disc was in fact only at lab prototype stage and if you can be bothered to do enough background reading and digging about in the specialist technical press, it is very clear to see that R&D for product advancements stopped with HD-DVD quite some time before the Tosh pulled the plug. The claim to the press of it been production ready was rubbish. It wasn't.

In short mate, what you said is very incorrect regardless of the practicalities, or indeed every day feasibility, of this 500gb BR disc.

0
0

Burn baby burn

Assuming (poorly) that we can burn these disks at 8x (as the latest BD burners are), that would take over 200 minutes or about 3 1/3rd hours.

0
0

I cant be bothered

I cant be bothered to figure it out, or even see if i can find the figures to do that...

So can someone tell me how long it would take to burn 500GB to one of these prototype discs....?

0
0

cool, now what do i put on it?!

excellent, more storage..;)

cheers,

bill

stuff and nonsense: http://www.eupeople.net/forum

0
0

More from The Register

 breaking news
Apple cored: Samsung sells 10 million Galaxy S4 in a month
Beware of South Koreans bearing Android
Microsoft reveals Xbox One, the console that can read your heartbeat
Upgrades Live service – and no always-on requirement
US boffin builds 32-way Raspberry Pi cluster
Beowulf cluster built for the price of a single PC
Review: HP Pavilion 14 Chromebook
All roads lead to Chrome?
Euro PC shipments plummet into bottomless pit of DOOOOM
11th quarter of decline, 20pc drop on last year - Gartner
Fairphone goes on sale to all
The Android handset that's PC can be yours
Nintendo throws flaming legal barrel at YouTubing fans
All your walk-through vid revenue are belong to us

Hands on with Hyper-V 3.0 and virtual machine movement

Our award-winning Regcasts have teamed up with training provider QA for the deepest of deep dives into Hyper-V, including a live demo.

Understand VM movement - just click to play, or go here for a bigger version.