Moser Baer India announced today the development of the world's first high speed 8x Blu-ray disc (BDR), backed by the OM&T, the former R&D subsidiary of Philips.

Recording at 8x on a Blu-Ray recording medium would allow a 2-hour High Definition video to be burned in less than 15 minutes.

"This is a major achievement for the Company and it gives us a significant advantage in the fast growing next generation optical format market. Moreover, this vindicates our strategy of acquiring OM&T and adding their capabilities to the strong in-house R&D team to lead the technology development curve in the optical and photovoltaic space. The pioneering work in the Blu-ray format will further enhance our global leadership position," said Ratul Puri, Executive Director, of Moser Baer in a statement.

Moser Baer took advantage of the acquisition of Philips' Optical Media & Technology (OM&T) activities last February, in order to complement the existing technology research.

Philips had showcased 7x (4-7x CAV) as well as at the 10x and 12x recording speeds on BD-R media last year.

Pushing the recording speeds of Blu-Ray media requires developments in both hardware and materials. Disc physical parameters are also a limiting factor for the maximum attainable writing speed, including a high noise level during recording as well as vibration. But the most important factor is the maximum allowed spinning speed of an optical disc. For 12cm discs (CD/DVD), spinning an optical disc at 10,800rpm has been proven as the realistic upper bound for half-height drives. A 12cm BD disc rotates between 1955 and 821rpm (inner to outer diameter) at 1X speed, so simple calculations result to the fact that the 12X (CAV) is expected to be the upper limit (ceiling) for BD devices on a PC. This is a simple theoretical approach and of course, reaching the 12x CAV writing speed also depend on the developments on the chemicals used for the disc and the performance/accuracy of the moving parts (hardware) used in a BD recorder.

In practice, the upper limit might prove to be as low as 7x or 8x, due to their complicated structure and their high spinning speed at such high speeds. However, the implications of high speed recording on servo bandwidths and system margins could be solved in the future.

Moser Baer's statement does not define whether the new 8x BD-R discs featured a phase-change or a dye layer, or even other layers such as Cu/Si. In any case, the challenge is to define the thickness of the layer that will give the best results (reflectivity e.t.c) for an optimized writing strategy. However, the new 8x BD-R disc achieved an adequate a recording quality (jitter below 7%), the company said. The 8X BD-R discs are also compatible with Version 1.2 book specifications and can also be recorded at lower speeds.

Moser Baer presented the development of high speed Blu-ray disc at the 14th Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) meeting held in Fukuoka in Japan.