The Recordable DVD Council (RDVDC) announced that Super Multi DVD burners have surpassed DVD Dual burners in global shipment volume with 12x DVD-RAM set to become mainstream in 2007, at a symposium held in Taipei on October 31. Kenji Koishi, director for the Compatibility Working Group of the Recordable DVD Council (RDVDC) said that the 66.7% of the DVD burners shipped globally in August were Super Multi models, Digitimes.com reports from Taiwan.

The growing demand for Super Multi DVD burners is mainly due to increasing use of the DVD-RAM format, a rewritable DVD format that can store information for 30 years, much longer than other formats, Koishi said, pointing out that it has been selected by Japan's government as the best media for information backup.

There have so far been 71 PC brands or vendors, consisting of 45 in Japan, eight in Taiwan, three in South Korea, 12 in North America and three in Europe, promoting DVD-RAM, according to Koishi. More than 21 Super Multi DVD burner models and over 93 related disc models have undergone 6,762 round-robin compatibility tests, proving that the compatibility of -RAM is as high as +RW and -RW, Koishi noted.

The highest available writing speeds for DVD-RAM stand at 6x to 8x currently, but will be upgraded to 12x in 2007, Koishi indicated, adding that he foresees the format becoming mainstream by then.