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Fancy writing a DVD in 6 minutes? Well, you certainly can, with a seventh generation DVD writer from Sony.

These new drives write at 16x, which many minds believe will be the physical recording limit of DVDs. This is because such a recording speed means that the disc spins at about 10,000 rpm, which is probably the highest speed the polycarbonate material of a DVD can handle.

Sony's new drives are available as internal (DRU-710A) and external (DRX-710UL). Both support a range of write speeds up to 16x and Double Layer burning at 2.4x.

Well, it is possible to write faster than 16x, instead of spinning the motor faster you put in another optical head in the drive...

There already exists a CD-ROM reader at the impossible speed of 72x (the max for cd-roms is 52x just as P66 said due to the fact that if you spin the CD's faster they can explode)

actually, thats a myth, somewhere around 30k rpms is where CDs start coming apart and that is if they have a defect. I tested this myself after seeing the infamous video clip that was circulating on the topic, also saw a very extensive test done by those Mythbuster guys on Discovery channel, they took several discs over 30k rpms and only the ones they had damaged prior to the tests shattered.

I was never a fan of Sony ROM drives and this won't change my mind. They had crappy burners before and I don't know if they inproved them at all.

I am not a big fan of their drives either, eventhough I have one of their 52Xs on my server (only cause I got it free through some OfficeDepot Advantage credits).

I will definetely wait for Lite-On's release on this one, which I'm sure is only a matter of time...

Sony is producing recording equipment to allow us to pirate their movies, quicker.

I've heard so much about LiteOn's drives recently. Are thy really that good?