News

For technophiles, DVD is the current hot ticket. The compact disc is far from dead, however. The 20-year-old format has been given a new lease on life by Sony Corporation, which in early July announced the development of a new technique that will double the data-storage capacity of recordable CDs.

Intended for the computer market, Sony's new system employs a shorter track pitch and a minimal pit length to increase the capacity of the discs from 650MB (MegaBytes) to 1.3GB (GigaBytes). Although both varieties of disc use a standard 780nm (nanometer) wavelength laser, the numerical aperture for the high-density version will be raised, necessitating a change in the optical pickup lens.

Manufacturers will be able to upgrade their CD drives by changing laser assemblies, according to Yoshiko Hara of Electronic Engineering Times. Because higher data density means a greater likelihood of errors, an update of the cross-interleave Reed-Solomon error-correction code (CIRC) is also part of the change, and requires a new control chip.

Sony is reportedly developing a 3GB rewritable DVD, but also has a huge interest in supporting the CD format, which originated in the laboratories of the company's longtime partner, Philips Electronics. In 1999, the market for recordable CD almost tripled over its 1998 level, to 16 million units worldwide. Market research organization Trend Concept, Inc. predicts that such growth will continue this year, to as many as 27 million units. Projections for DVD-RAM are approximately 360,000 for this year, according to Trend.

CD-ROM drives have been standard equipment in personal computers for the past three years. CD recorder drives, or "CD burners," are now widely available at around $200, and come prepackaged with software that enables users to back up their computer files—and to copy music discs without the copy-inhibit restrictions of some standalone CD recorders. Some music-industry executives have blamed the CD-R phenomenon for a slowdown in sales of prerecorded CDs. 650MB and 750MB recordable discs are available in bulk for less than $1 apiece, a fact that has led a few observers to question the market potential of high-density CDs.