Hitachi Develops BD-100

Hitachi has revealed that they have developed a four-layer Blu-ray disc capable of storing 100GB of data. While this has been successfully proven in the laboratories by other companies, Hitachi claims that current Blu-ray drives would only require a firmware upgrade to be compatible, rather than a specialized drive other companies are promoting.

They are still working on stabilizing the signal quality further before releasing the product to the public, but a consumer ready product may not be far off. The company is also working on an eight-layer disc using the same technique, but is having difficulty with the laser penetrating each layer. The reflective quality of each layer diffuses the laser, making it difficult to read top layers. They are currently working on a solution they hope will rectify that issue.