Toshiba and three partners have taken the lead in the HD DVD race have announcing successful development of a prototype of a HD DVD-R disc.
Despite rumored talks between competing companies for a unified standard, the two industry groups at odds on the next-generation DVD front -- the DVD Forum, headed by Toshiba and pushing HD DVD, and the Blu-ray Disc Association, driven by Sony and Blu-ray discs -- have been moving in their own directions. While Blu-ray said in late May that its process was advancing, Toshiba is the first to officially lay out plans.
In a statement, Toshiba and partner companies Hayashibara Biochemical Laboratories, Hitachi Maxell and Mitsubishi Kagaku Media describe the write-once next generation DVD disc as one that can be easily produced at high volume on standard DVD-Recordable production lines.
Hitachi and Mitsubishi have separately tested and verified the manufacturability of the write-once discs, which use a new organic dye specifically developed for blue-laser applications, and have confirmed the prospect of volume production.
The new dye is the result of a joint development project by Hayashibara, Mitsubishi and Toshiba and is said to be very receptive to blue laser light for next generation blue laser DVD players and recorders. As the HD DVD-R disc is based on the same disc structure as DVD discs, back-to-back bonding of two 0.6 millimeter-thick substrates, already installed DVD-Recordable manufacturing lines can utilize the new dye in efficient production of HD DVD-R, the companies explained.
"HD DVD's basic feature of sharing the same disc structure as DVD made a large contribution to this success, and offers more and compelling evidence of our design policy's validity," said Hisashi Yamada, chief fellow of Toshiba's digital media network company, in the statement.
He continued: "In 2004 the recordable and rewritable DVD disc market stood at around 1.4 billion discs, and about 90 percent of those discs were write-once discs. The next generation write-once HD DVD disc will be just as important, and I am sure that proving an efficient mass production technology for HD DVD-R discs will provide a big boost for a smooth transition from DVD to HD DVD."
Hitachi and Mitsubishi will commercialize HD DVD-R discs in spring 2006, at the same time as the launch of HD DVD recorders and PCs with built-in HD DVD drives by hardware manufacturers, including Toshiba.
