16x DVD-R Drives Planned for 2004

madsenj37 writes "From this article at PC World: 'Mitsubishi Electric has developed a more powerful semiconductor laser that should pave the way for 16X DVD writers to be commercially available by about 2004. The new laser is able to deliver pulses of light at a power of 200 milliwatts, which is double that of lasers used in today's 4X DVD writer drives, the Tokyo company said this week.' It goes on to say that a whole Digital Versatile Disc Could be written in about 3.5 minutes."

Comments

PowerMac schedule ?

[selderrr]

I sincerely hope Apple picks up where it left off with the superdrive : they were the first to incorporate it, but they're still stuck at 2x speed...

I'm planning to buy a high end dual G4, but I'm waiting for Apple to up the specs on components (but NOT the CPU for a change) FSB, RAM, GPU... If I pay $5000 on a computer, I want the biggest, baddest machine available, and 8x or at least 4x DVD writing, 533MHZ FSB with Radeon 9700Pro should be default. Except for the BTO radeon, I'm have no other options but wait...

Re:PowerMac schedule ?

[sporty]

I hope you do realize that the 533mhz FSB that intel is claiming is really a 133mhz bus that is quad-pumped (similar to agp which is 66mhz, double- quad- or 8way-pumped to give higher bandwidth but worse latency). This is not the optimal solution, and is certainly a far cry from a true 533mhz fsb.

Is that so? Paralellism and efficiency depends on the application in use. If the bus, with one line, can always be ready to carry the next instruction without blocking the prior one, then sure, it's a great solution.

If there is any reason for hesitation of the bus, then instructions will queue. It is just like SMP processors. It's not always guarnateed that any processor will be given it's full capacity to process. Is why SMP works out a little better as it handles extra instructions.

Optimal solution, no, but a "true 533 bus" might have latency problems if the queue gets full.

too fast?

[mobets]

At that speed drives will be capable of writing data at 176 megabits per second

Maybe things will change in a year, but my hardrive only reads at about 60 Mbps. That isn't even half the speed this drive is suposed to be able to write at. The only way I can see this working is if you have the memory to buffer 3GB before you start writing.

Re:16 speed?

[MindStalker]

Na, my first DVD coaster was a few months ago with my first DVD writer. Ordered a pack of generic DVD-Rs half ended up being coasters, now I just buy opertron (cheapest non generic and recommended by pioneer).
Ask Slashdot: What DVD-R DVD-RW media brands do you recommend?