Panasonic on Tuesday introduced what it claims is the first Blu-ray recordable media capable of burning data at 4x speeds, versus 2x for most other Blu-ray discs. The single-sided disc will be available in 25GB and 50GB versions which will be introduced in the market this July and September, respectively, according to the company.
With such massive storage capacities, the write-speed of the disc actually plays an important part. Panasonic is using a new phase-change recording technology, which they claim makes the burning process stable and reliable even at 4x speed, allowing the discs to have a maximum data transfer speed of 144Mbps, which means they can copy 1GB of data in just one minute.
Panasonic says the new discs offer extremely low error rate, reduced to 1/10 that of a conventional disc, ensuring high reliability and a high quality recording. Pricing for the upcoming discs were not revealed by the company.