Today, burning media of the new optical formats costs a lot of money and the Blu-ray burners, and media, that have appeared so far can only handle up to 2x write speed. That is until today, the Japanese company Nichia Corp. has namely announced a new blue laser with enough power to burn Blu-ray and HD DVD media at speeds up to 10x.
“Nichia’s new laser diode is able to emit pulsed light at 320mW, while it offers a stable operation of 1,000 hours, according to the company. The diode could be used for optical discs including Blu-ray and HD DVD, allowing 10X speed recording with a double-layer disc and 2X speed recording with a four-layer disc.”
Today’s blue laser diodes weighs in at 130mW, which explains the big jump in write speed. The new laser is expected to hit mass production during the first half of 2008 but at the same time there has to be made some great progress in the manufacturing of optical media to make these speeds real.
