Netherlands Royal Philips Electronics has announced that the optical pickup unit "OPU81" which performs reading and writing of a blue-ray disk, DVD+R/RW, and CD-R/RW has been developed while mass production will start in 2006.

The optical pickup unit which in addition to 650nm for DVD+R/RW, and 780nm CD-R / for RW, also accommodates 405nm for blue-ray disks. It corresponds to BD (25GB), 2 layer BD (50GB), DVD+R DL, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, CD-R, and CD-RW. With the same head, it will also be possible to have 50GB of reading and writing on dual layer BD.