Pioneer and Mitsubishi Chemical announced today that they
have developed a new type of BD-R disc that uses organic dye in the recording layer. This new media corresponds to the "Low to High"
(LTH) recording system which is included in the Blu-ray Disc Recordable Format Ver 1.2 specifications. Here's part of Pioneer's press
release, translated from Japanese:
Both
corporations advanced the cooperation development of the pigment type blue ray postscript type disk from 2004. This time, the Mitsubishi
chemical media took charge as for the pioneer of the appraisal of the trial manufacture disk and the verification from viewpoint of
compatibility of drive and of the further improvement and disk trial manufacture of the organic pigment record material, the design of
the disk structure with simulation took charge. It succeeded in the development of 2x fast record organic pigment system BD-R by fusing
the technology these both.
In addition both corporations, ever since the announcement of cooperation development 2005,
advanced the standardization propulsion activity of the organic pigment type record media, but this spring, the recording type which
corresponds to organic pigment system BD-R (Low to High system) was adopted for Blu-ray Disc Recordable Format
Ver.1.2.
Pioneer and Mitsubishi Chemical claim that this dye will lower production costs as companies using it will be
able to produce discs using modified CD-R and DVD-R manufacturing equipment. The big catch here is that discs using the LTH system will
not be compatible with existing Blu-ray writers. While Pioneer is working on a new drive that can write to these discs, it is unknown
whether support can be added to older drives via a firmware update. If you'd like to read more, Pioneer's entire press release can be
found here.
