Panasonic kicks off 50GB Blu-ray production

[Gregg Lengling]

Panasonic has announced they've begun "pilot production" of dual layer, 50GB Blu-ray discs out in their Torrance, California factory. This dual layer disc is apparently the first of many capacity enhancements that Blu-ray may see throughout the years by just slapping on more and more data layers; we know from a while back that Sony is working on octuple layer discs with a 200GB capacity. Panasonic seems confident in their production capabilities, too, because they're saying they will ship sample discs out by the end of the month. Expect to hear plenty more about these particular discs at CES 2006 in January of next year, since that's when this whole HD DVD vs. Blu-ray thing is supposed to kick off for consumers in the US.

[Joseph S]

A nice $3 200GB compact sized disc sure would be helpful.  :cool: Yeah, it's a pipe dream now. At least there's a rollout of something going on.