Panasonic announced today that the company will globally introduce Blu-ray discs with 4x writing speed this summer to coincide with its 4x BD drive launch. Since introducing the world?s first dual layer BD-RE disc in 2004, Panasonic has continued to lead the market development of Blu-ray disc technologies. The new 4x discs will be available in both 25GB and 50GB.



Based on its 35-year experience in optical disc development, Panasonic succeeded in developing a new phase-change recording layer to achieve a 4x writing speed. The maximum data transfer speed for a 4x disc is 144Mbps, which means it can copy a 1GB folder in just one minute. This phase-change recording technology is used both for single and dual layer structures.

The newly developed recording layer has a wide power margin at any speed from 1x to 4x. This enables a high-quality recording, even if the drive?s laser power fluctuates, resulting in greater overall drive compatibility.

Panasonic says that the new film-forming technology minimizes dust generated in the sputtering machine. As a result, the error rate is reduced to 1/10 of the rate of a conventional disc, ensuring high reliability and a high quality recording.