A new blue laser diode, developed by Sanyo, could help increase the capacity of Blu-ray discs. Even if it does, however, we’re still a few years away from seeing any such discs.
The new diode emits a beam of 450 milliwatts, which would be powerful enough to write onto two additional data layers on a Blu-ray disc. While current Blu-ray discs max out at two, 25GB layers, discs produced using this new Sanyo diode would see their capacity double—four, 25GB layers adding up to a total capacity of 100GB per disc.
Write speeds would also increase, moving up to 12X. That means you’d be able to write an entire disc in just 10 minutes.
But again, this fancy new diode was just developed, meaning it won’t used in the production of Blu-ray discs for at least one year, if not two.
And they say physical media has no future, ha!