There's no doubting the fact that the optical storage market has and probably always will be an extremely active and competitive market.

Both drive and media manufacturers are continually looking for that edge that will lift them ahead of the competition.

With drive manufacturers, the race has always been about speed. Who will have the fastest burner. Media manufacturers have likewise had to keep pace, producing discs that are able to write at these ever increasing speeds. But now that we are reaching the maximum writing speed of 16X for DVD media, due to the physical limits of the polycarbonate used in the manufacture of discs, the emphasis is slowly shifting over to capacity. Currently, there is a fierce battle on between Blu-laser and HD-DVD to see which one of these two standards will grab the largerst slice of the market.

In the meantime, media manufacturers have been introducing their own innovations, mainly in the field of media surface durability. Manufacturers such as TDK with their Ultra-Durable Armor Plated Recordable DVD and Datawrite's "Titanium" are two that have been hitting the headlines in the past few months. Now, a new brand has emerged onto the scene "Tuffdisc". Tuffdisc media has been reprinted with a tough pebbledash finish producing a media surface that is 40 times more scratch resistant and 20 times more dust resistant than standard DVD media.

Based on the highly compatible Mitsubishi dye, it offers extremely high durability, withstanding the toughest of everyday handling and abuse.

Tuffdiscs offer highly affordable pricing when compared to premium branded media such as Datawrite, Datasafe , Ridisc.

The official Launch date for Tuffdisc is the 10th of February 2005.