Pioneer's 400 GB Blu-ray Disc

Pioneer has announced a 16-layer read-only optical disc with a capacity of 400 gigabytes which it will unveil at the International Symposium on Optical Memory and Optical Data Storage 2008 (ISOM/ODS2008) on July 13. The disk’s per-layer capacity is 25 gigabytes, which is the same as that of a Blu-ray Disc and this multilayer technology will also be applicable to multilayer recordable discs.

July 7, 2008 Pioneer has announced a 16-layer read-only optical disc with a capacity of 400 gigabytes which it will unveil at the International Symposium on Optical Memory and Optical Data Storage 2008 (ISOM/ODS2008) on July 13. The disk’s per-layer capacity is 25 gigabytes, which is the same as that of a Blu-ray Disc and this multilayer technology will also be applicable to multilayer recordable discs.

For multilayer optical discs, it has been difficult to obtain clear signals from each recording layer in a stable manner due to crosstalk from adjacent layers and transmission loss. Utilizing the optical disc production technology that it has developed in the DVD field, Pioneer solved these problems by, among other things, using a disc structure that can reduce crosstalk from adjacent layers, resulting in a 16-layer optical disc that can playback high-quality signals from every layer.

As for the read-out system, Pioneer achieved stability in the playback of recorded signals by employing a wide-range spherical aberration compensator and light-receiving element that can read out weak signals at a high signal-to-noise ratio in the optical pick-up mechanism. Since the optical specifications of the objective lens, such as NA (Numerical Aperture)*2, are the same as those for the existing BD discs, it is possible to maintain compatibility between the new 16-layer optical disc and the BD discs.

The 16-layer optical disc technology, capable of storing much more data than the conventional discs on one disc, will greatly reduce the number of discs to be used and therefore contribute to the conservation of resources.