Blu-ray disc capacity to get larger
Six months ago I was having a discussion with a friend who is a big whig at Sony. I told him that I was concerned that 3D was going to gobble up the 50gb BD-50 disc, and that would lead to compromised audio and video streams with more compression than 2D presentations. He told me Sony and Panasonic were working on a way to increase the layer capacity on the Blu ray disc while remaining compatible with current players in the field. Well, they finally finished testing and approving of i-MLSE (Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation) evaluation index and are ready to submit it for approval from the BDA. If this is accepted, it will increase a single layer capacity from 25gb to 33.4gb, which when applied to a two layer disc would result in a disc that goes from 50gb to 66.8gb. This is perfect for very long movies and 3D.
Given that Sony and Panasonic are big players in the BDA, I look for this to be approved some time this year, probably sooner than later.