The company is adding two DVD+R Double Layer (DL) DVD drives to its line of Dual RW burners. An internal DRU-700A drive and an external DRX-700UL drive represent the company"s move into double-layer recording.
The new burners and accompanying compatible discs promise to almost double the storage capacity of recordable DVD discs. Users will be able to store four hours of MPEG-2 video or up to 8.5GB of multimedia data on a single disc. Sony officials say the initial burners will have 2.4x DVD+R recording speeds, 40x CD-R speeds, and 24x CD-RW recording speeds. "Double-layer recording is the next milestone in DVD technology," says Wolfgang Schlichting, research director for removable storage at the market research firm IDC. "Sony"s double-layer drives put twice the recording power in the hands of the consumer, reducing the need to handle multiple discs."