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Doubling DVD Drive Capacity

Techstination feature for Thursday, March 18, 2004

Doubling the capacity of DVD drives. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. The next generation of DVD burning drives is arriving. They'll be able to store up to 8 and a half gigabytes of data….or four hours of high quality video…on dual layer discs. Sony is selling both internal and external models. Marketing manager Robert DeMoulin…

"The drive can record with the new DVD+R DL, which is the DVD + camp's double layer technology. The DVD Forum has not yet released a spec for the dash or the minus …however people want to call it…format for dual layer."

The different formats for DVD burning still create some consumer confusion. Multi format single layer drives had helped to clear some of that up. But with dual layer drives and media selling for only slightly higher prices, Sony thinks they'll catch on fast…

"Initially, there will certainly be …double layer will be kind of positioned as a premium or a higher end product, but I actually forsee maybe even by the end of this year, all major brands of recorders will have some dual layer capability for recording."

It will allow owners of media center PCs for instance to store high quality full length movies they've recorded on a single disc. The dual layer DVDs are still just an interim step leading to even higher capacity technologies needed for storing high definition video. There's a battle going on in the industry over the best format for that as well. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.