|   Here's the record industry's newest format... | PwrPopGuy
Apr 21, 2002 4:58 AM | | ...that, of course, is computer-copyproof.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/ptech/04/20/really.compact.discs.ap/index.html |
| Have you heard about TDK's MultiLevel? | Slosh
Apr 21, 2002 5:34 AM | | This looks pretty cool, actually. It triples the capacity of CD-R/RW without using compression. Here's a paragraph from <i>Stereophile Guide To Home Theater</i>:
"The ML technology is ingenious. Instead of burning pits of different lenghts into the disc's recording layer, ML uses "data cells" of a uniform size slightly smaller than the minimum pit size on a conventional CD-R/RW. The laser burns a non-reflective spot into each cell, and the size of the spot determines the amount of light reflected from the pit as the data are read. The current implementation can accommodate eight different spot sizes that result in eight different levels of reflectivity, which correspond to three bits of data. Thus, each data cell represents three bits instead of one as in a conventional CD, tripling the disc's capacity."
Your burner can be upgraded to ML with a single controller chip and firmware upgrades, and can still be used as a conventional CD-R/RW drive, but you'll need to buy special ML-R and ML-RW discs to take advantage of the technology, and TDK is estimating the street prices to be $2 and $3 per disc. Of course, you won't be able to play ML discs on a conventional CD player but it does look like an interesting idea, and if it catches on I'm sure we'll see ML upgrades for CD players because the optics remain unchanged. |
| |
