Just when you thought that your spanking new Blu-ray recorder is the bomb, along comes Pioneer to prick your balloon of pride and joy. After all, there is much to be learned here, with the Japanese company rolling out a new generation of high capacity optical discs which offers a whopping 400GB of storage space thanks to the 16 layers found within. According to Pioneer, they believe that the technology could “greatly reduce the number of discs to be used and therefore contribute to the conservation of resources.” I couldn’t agree more with that as it is only natural, but woe to you if you forget to label your discs whenever you perform any backup. Good luck in sifting through 400GB worth of data - imagine if you had 10 of such discs?

Each layer will hold up to 25GB of storage space, which is the equivalent of a single layer Blu-ray disc. Pioneer has not yet unveiled the kind of technology which its discs rely upon, and we still don’t know whether red or blue laser technologies were used. However, it is encouraging to note that Pioneer did give an assurance that their new 16-layer discs would be “compatible” with current Blu-ray discs, which could point towards a blue laser experience. Unfortunately, the technology involved means you get a read-only disc at this point in time, although Pioneer engineers and boffins are hard at work to transfer such technology to a re-recordable format in the future.

Sony did mention in the past that their Blu-ray media can be scaled up to 10 layers, but these multiple layers translate to weakened signals that makes it hard to stabilize the entire operation. Pioneer has apparently overcome this situation, so it would be interesting to see how much Sony is willing to pay to obtain similar tech. Imagine Metal Gear Solid 5 on a 250GB playground!

Source: TGDaily