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Sony Looking to increase Blu-ray Storage Capacity

Posted on 06. Jan, 2010 by Freak_c in Blu-Ray, News

If there is one thing that’s true with storage space these days, is that it’s never enough and we are alway s looking for more. Well Sony and Panasonic have created a new technology, called i-MLSE, which will be able to increase the storage capacity of a blu-ray disc by a third. This will bring a single layer blu-ray to 33.4GB from the current 25GB. Besides movies only some games, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XIII, were able to fill up a disc. See below for full details.

The problem until now has been there was no evaluation technology appropriate for 33.4 GB media using PRML. PRML assumes inter-symbol interference, which makes it difficult to base optical disc quality evaluation on jitter, as is widely done now for Blu-ray and many other optical discs. A source at Sony Corp. states, “At high-density recording, such as 33.4 GB, the relationship between the error rate and jitter collapses, and it becomes extremely difficult to evaluate jitter.”

Sony and Panasonic Corp. resolved this by developing the i-MLSE (Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation) evaluation index. Details of i-MLSE were announced at International Symposium on Optical Memory 2009 (ISOM ’09), held in October 2009. The first of the two key characteristics is that i-MLSE has a strong correlation with the error rate (Fig. 1) even in read/write at 33.4 GB using PRML. The second, according to Sony, is that “i-MLSE exhibits the same relationship to signal quality as conventional jitter.” In other words, it will be relatively simple to estimate the read error rate from the i-MLSE, just as can be done now with jitter.

Fig. 1 Confirming Correlation between i-MLSE and Error Rate

The i-MLSE disc evaluation index was calculated for a BD-R with a per-layer storage capacity of 33.4 GB, and shown to have a strong correlation with the symbol error rate.

The problem with i-MLSE is that calculation is complex. With recent hardware advancements, though, says Sony, “It should be possible to process in real time, just like jitter.”

Sony plans to propose widespread adoption of i-MLSE via the Blu-ray Disc Association and other avenues. Sony is a core member of the Association, making it likely that i-MLSE will be adopted as a standard.

The good news is that a simple firmware update is needed for your current blu-ray player (PS3) to read the new discs. So with this extra space is this already the start of the HHD (Higher High definition) era? News Source.

Tags: Blu-Ray, i-MlSE, Panasonic, Sony