Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd. (Sanyo) today announced that it has developed a new recordable optical disc technology named “HD-BURN” to realize two times the capacity - 1.4GB - on existing CD-R media. “HD-BURN” will be incorporated with Sanyo’s SuperCombiDrive (CRD-DV2) shortly. Sanyo has finished standardization of this new recording technology already and started licensing at the same time. - History

The development was started from two years before. The main reason was that the prices of CD-R media kept falling, while the DVD recordable media even it is expected to drop also, it will delay. Sanyo believes the HD-BURN technology has a potential market application since CD-R media is so spreadly used from users.

- Future

In the near future, Sanyo plans to support HD-BURN mode for US-RW media at the high speed of 24X re-writing. Moreover, while the capacity stopped at 2X in order to keep the compatibility, 3X capacities are aimed.

- Who will support "HD-BURN"?

So far few drive makers announced support for this feature: Accesstek, Lite-ON, BTC and BENQ. AHEAD, and BHA and ECI are also named as software makers. Inside B's Recorder GOLD and Nero, you would be able to record DVD Video authoring. Sanyo will support "HD-BURN" at their DVD players, while the LSI chipsets will be available soon (with licence).

- HD-BURN Logos

Low pricing and popularization of the existing CD-R media - 0.7GB - is remarkable, and recording large files such as audio visual data onto personal use storage is becoming popular too. In the storage market, DVD recording media - 4.7GB - had been already known as a solution for large data recording, however, its recording capacity is too large according to circumstances and there is a needs of substitutional capacity in-between.

“HD-BURN” technology gives the customer alternative storage capacity between CD-R and DVD recording and enabling user to store more data on existing CD-R, to enjoy his own making video in low cost, and so on.

For example, 2 pieces of VideoCD are necessary for 2hrs video and it is troublesome changing discs. With “HD-BURN” recording, only 1 piece of CD-R is required even for 2hrs video data. It is also said that one-thirds of DVD capacity is suitable to sort out own made video.

It is remarkable that, “HD-BURN” technology is familiar with existing DVD Player and “HD-BURN” disc can be played by some change of firmware on DVD Player. To realize it easily, Sanyo is going to introduce the technical information on how to play “HD-BURN” disc and any DVD manufacturer will be possible to use it for their own products. It is expected that the DVD Player supporting “HD-BURN” disc will be released shortly.

2. Features - HD-BURN incorporated drive CRD-BPDV2 -

(1) Two times the capacity can be realized on existing CD-R media.

(2) With HD-BURN mode, 36x speed data recording and 80x speed data reading can be realized. (CLV Record/Read, speed after converted as CD based transfer rate.)

(3) Buffer Under Run prevention “BURN-Proof” supported.

(4) HD-BURN mode will also support CD-RW media by firmware upgrade. 24x speed data recording on CD-RW will be able to realize with HD-BURN mode. (speed after converted as CD based transfer rate.)

(5) The writing application software to support the drive are B’s GOLD(B.H.A.) and Nero(AHEAD). With these application, customer can easily benefit high capacity recording, while recording from DV source, authoring for DVD-video, etc, by HD-BURN.

As Sanyo mentions:

a) This technology cannot be used for AudioCDs :(

b) With slight modifications in firmware, HD-BURN CDs can be recognized from DVD-ROM and stand-alone DVD readers. Unfortunaly CD-ROMs would not be able to read HD-BURN media.

c) You can author DVD-Video format to a HD-BURN CDs in order to fit up to 30mins video (with real 720x576 DVD resolution)

- How Sanyo managed to increase the capacity up to 1.4GB?

a) Sanyo decreased the pit length down to 0.62micro-meter. The CD has pit length of 0.83micro-meter. That means HD-BURN offers x1.35 higher capacity. The pit length has been chosen in order current CD/DVD readers with small modifications could be able to read the HD-BURN discs. The following picture shows how the pit length of HD-BURN media, compared with CD and DVD formats:

b) Sanyo changed the error correction system from CIRC to RS-PRODUCT Code (RS-PC) and modulation to 8-16. That gave another x1.49 boost to capacity. Sanyo mentions that the new RS-PC error correction system is less compared with CIRC, it is more efficient!

c) Summary: 1 HD-BURN disc equals with (1.49 X 1.35) = x2.0115 CD. The track pitch (1.6±0.1) and record area (radius 25mm) remained the same (else would need different media, like Sony's DDCD format).

Lastly, below is a comparison between CD and HD-BURN formats:

- CD Format: Data rate/Channel bit rate = (24x8/588)/(2048/2352) = 28.4% [ with Modulation 43% & Error Correction 65%]

- HD-BURN Format: Data rate/Channel bit rate = (16x2048x8)/(619008) = 42.3% [with Moduration 49% and Error Correction 87%]