Before anyone jumps for joy (or panics) the additional layer in the 3-layer HD DVD discs announced today, aren?t for Blu-ray, they’re for DVD. This new 3-layer disc from Toshiba and Memory-Tech can be configured as a 30GB HD DVD plus 4.7GB DVD or as an 8.5GB dual-layer DVD with a 15GB HD DVD layer.

Applications you ask? The first and most welcome use (at least in my book) are single sided HD DVD/DVD combo discs, no more flippers! Another use could be HD video and advanced audio only on the 30GB HD layers while the SD extras round out the 4.7GB DVD layer.

But this does present one other interesting option. As anyone who’s already experimented with authoring their own HD DVD content on a standard DVD knows, the Toshiba players already recognize HD content on a standard DVD. So in theory at least this new disc manufacturing technique could push HD DVD’s (short term) theoretical limit to 34.7 GB.

As interesting as all of this is, it begs the question; how far away are we from seeing the 45GB triple-layer HD DVD disc approved by the DVD Forum and put into the HD DVD specification? Well according to Toshiba’s Jim Armour “probably mid-next year”.

R.Hollis

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