Sony Expands Blu-Ray Storage Capacity

Sony, in association with Panasonic, has just announced plans to increase the storage capacity on their Blu-Ray discs from 25GB to 35.4GB.

This increase applies to the individual layers of the Blu-Ray discs. Therefore, Sony’s dual layer discs made for gaming and other high-storage purposes will be bumped up to 66.8GB of usable space.

The new capabilities extend from new partial response maximum likelihood (PRML) signal processing. A process that according to a press release from Nikkei “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”.

This new technology will be compatible with all current Blu-Ray players, as well as PS3 systems, and will only require a firmware update to become active. Game developers like Hideo Kojima, who have already claimed to have maxed out the current Blu-Ray disc capacity, will now have a higher bar to reach with the fidelity of their games.