DVD-RAM Up To 4.7GB

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. Recently announced its development of DVD-RAM drives capable of both reading from and writing to discs with a maximum, double-sided capacity of 9.4GB and single-sided capacity of 4.7GB.The new DVD-RAM drive is based on the 4.7GB DVD-RAM format now being reviewed by the DVD Forum, but it can read from and write to existing 2.6GB DVD-RAM discs also.The drive employs new optical pick-up technology composed of high power red laser and optics detectors that allow compatibility with optical discs of varying substrate thicknesses such as DVDs (0.6mm) and various types of CDs (1.2mm).Matsushita said the new capacity levels provide suitable storage for external PC memory devices, as well as for writing and reading such multimedia information as movies and music. Availability dates have not been announced for the extended-capacity drives and discs.