Pioneer to be the next big optical storage leader

The folks at Digitimes report that Pioneer has something very impressive to show at the IT Month fair currently taking place in Taipei, a new super multi-layer optical disc that's capable of holding a hell of a lot more 25GB layers than Blu-ray's two; no less than 16 of them. If all 16x25GB layers were to be filled, that's 400GB of data.



Although the technology behind this super multi-layer read-only disc is based on Blu-ray, the material of reflective layers is dielectric (as opposed to BD's metallic layers) which is where the biggest advancement lies.

The best thing about this disc is that the pick-up head (PUH) is the same as that of blank BD discs, meaning these discs will work just fine on existing BD players. It's this very reason that should see the new tech go into mass production (beginning in read-only format) as early as next year through to 2010, with re-writable discs hitting soon after. Pioneer are also confident they can push the limits further by 2013, introducing a 1TB disc.

• Read more: Opinion: PS5 Pro's absent disc drive isn't about choice, it's about profit and future economics