Blu-ray discs exceeding 100GB of capacity should be available shortly, now that the Blu-ray Disc Association has finalized and released its BDXL specification.  In an announcement today, the association said the following:

“…manufacturers can now obtain licensing information and license applications needed to begin production of the high capacity write-once and rewritable discs and hardware (http://www.blu-raydisc.info/).

Targeted primarily at commercial segments such as broadcasting, medical and document imaging enterprises with significant archiving needs, BDXL™ provides customers with triple layer 100GB RE (rewritable) and R (write-once) discs and quadruple layer 128GB R discs. Possible consumer applications include capture and playback of HD broadcast and satellite programming in markets where set-top recorders are prevalent.”

It’s important to remember that these new BDXL discs are not backward compatible with existing Blu-ray hardware, thus those wishing to adopt this new technology will have to shell out some cash for what could, at least initially, be a very expensive equipment upgrade to simply read and write these new discs.

Although Blu-ray itself hasn’t caught on with consumers in the same way DVD did over a decade ago, an upgrade of the Blu-ray specification still makes sense.  The original Blu-ray disc standard isn’t capacious enough to include the features, such as 3D and ultra-high definition video, that consumers will want in the next generation of  home theater equipment.  While there are obvious uses for the 100GB Blu-ray data discs outside of the entertainment industry, enterprise and personal data storage and redundancy is still best and most economically accomplished using traditional platter-based hard drives.

So although technologically BDXL exists, we’ll have to wait and see, at least in the short term, if anyone actually adopts it given the ubiquity of other popular, non-optical media formats.  If not, it could amount to nothing more than a last gasp by a dying technology.

[Via:  Slashgear]