Mass-produced HD DVD-Rs will be possible thanks to a new organic dye.
A new organic dye developed for blue-laser optical recording applications will make high volume production of HD DVD possible in time for the format’s expected spring 2006 launch.
A group of four manufacturers, including Hitachi Maxell and Mitsubishi Kagaku Media/Verbatim, Toshiba and Hayashibara Biochemical Laboratories, jointly announced the successful development of a prototype HD DVD-R.
The new dye is the result of a joint development project by Hayashibara Biochemical Laboratories, Mitsubishi Kagaku Media/Verbatim and Toshiba.
Standard DVD-R discs use a photosensitive organic dye as the data storage medium in their recording layer. In the transition to HD DVD, manufacturers had to meet the challenge of developing a dye for HD DVD-R discs that could be used with the narrow wavelength of a blue laser and offered sufficient readout stability. The newly developed organic dye is highly sensitive to blue laser light, has the uncompromised readout stability essential for practical use, and the solubility in organic solvent required for easy production of the dye recording layer by a spin-coating process.
Separately, Game Spot News reported that Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi told reporters June 8 that an effort to head off a format war between Sony’s Blu-Ray technology and Toshiba’s HD-DVD was essentially dead.
For more information, visit www.toshiba.co.jp/index.htm.
