Pioneer Shows-off 400GB Blu-ray

Pioneer put on quite a show at the IT Month fair in Taipei, Taiwan yesterday. They call it the super multi-layer Blu-ray disc. So far it's a read-only optical disc but it reaches into a total capacity of 400 GB on 16 separate layers.

Okay that's 16 layers of Blu-ray with 25GB of capacity each. Math… makes…head…hurt… But Pioneer promises that it adds up to a whopping 400 GB Blu-ray disc.

We first heard about Pioneer’s super multi-layer technology last summer in a company announcement.

Pioneer 400 GB Blu-ray Disc.

Now Pioneer is demonstrating the technology at the IT trade show in Taiwan. Pioneer High Fidelity Taiwan says the specifications for the pick-up head of the disc is the same as those of blank BD discs. This means the best thing about the technology is that (according to Digitimes and Pioneer) it’ll work on standard old Blu-ray disc players like the one you have at home.

Pioneer’s internal roadmap for super multi-layer technology has read-only ready for 2008-2010 and rewritable discs by 2012. A long range plan has 1TB discs in 2013.

As for commercial pressed discs using super multi-layer, it might not be such a hot item. As our own Editor-in-Chief pointed out when Pioneer first announced its breakthrough: One scratch and your whole collection is gone. There are issues with read-only commercial discs and simply adding more layers for greater capacity. It means more is at stake when one layer fails and the whole disc is wiped out.

Editor's Note: I'm holding out for solid state... - Clint DeBoer

It's probably more practical to see this as a breakthrough when rewritable discs become available. But still… It would be cool to have the director's cut of the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy on one disc – even if you did want to consider the extended warranty.