Sony is about to enter one of the most important battles in many, many years; the battle for the next generation DVD format. We recently reported about Toshiba that will soon launch the first laptop with HD DVD and that Sony Home Pictures will launch the Blu-ray format on May 23 by releasing a number of movies. We’ve now received information that states that Sony will start to ship rewritable (RE) Blu-ray discs to Europe while regular writable (R) is expected to arrive in the middle of next month, April. Only single layer discs with 25GB kapacitet, the dual layer discs are expected to arrive later this year.
“The products due in March and April each provide 25GB of storage capacity and run at 2x speeds – a transfer rate of 72Mbps, Sony said. The two media are sprayed with a scratch-resistant, anti-static coating – handy, given how thin the data layer is on a BD. Sony said its own tests forecast a lifespan of 30 years for both types of disc.”
The prices of the BD-R media is expected to be about €25 while BD-RE will be €30.
Source: RegHardware
