Digital Home Thoughts: Blu-Ray Discs Soon To Hold 128GB of Data

"50GB Blu-ray disks aren't exactly what I'd call "cramped", but just in case you thought the existing spec was getting a bit long in the tooth the Blu-ray association has released a new standard today that will bump capacities up to 128GB (write-once) or 100GB (rewritable). The new format which will be called BDXL sounds promising, but unfortunately won't be backwards compatible with older hardware. I suspect this little caveat will hamper its adoption pretty heavily, but is great to see that optical storage isn't dead yet."

It's not like the existing blu-ray discs are running short of space, but should we need more capacity in the future it's nice to know that the blu-ray standards are prepared for it. Of course if you do require that much capacity then you will have to upgrade your blu-ray drive as the existing laser in your drive is not powerful enough to use with the new discs. There's always a catch.