Sharp Set to Offer First 100GB Capacity Blu-Ray Player

Japanese electronics maker Sharp announced that it will be the first consumer electronics vendor to come to market with a recordable triple-layer Blu-ray player that can hold 100GB of storage, double the capacity of the current generation of Blu-ray drives.

The Sharp player, model VR-100BR1, is the first to support the BDXL format introduced in April by the Blu-ray Disc Association, the industry working group that develops and maintains the format. BDXL allows for either a write once, read many (WORM) style that supports up to 128GB of data, or it can support up to 100GB of data in multiple rewritable disc formats.

Even though single-layer Blu-ray is 25GB and dual-layer is 50GB, triple-layer BDXL doubles capacity while adding only one layer. The new write-once disc can store up to 12 hours of regular digital TV broadcasts, nearly nine hours of digital satellite broadcasts or four hours of high definition broadcasts, according to Sharp.

The disc is made with a new "hard coat" process that better protects the content side of the disc. One of the complaints against Blu-ray discs, as renters have noticed, is that it is more prone to scratches and more easily rendered unreadable. The new coating will better protect the data from scratches.

Sharp did not announce the price, but blank BDXL discs are around $55 to $60. The player will launch in Japan at the end of the month.

The new player will play old Blu-ray discs, but any BDXL disc, whether it's recordable or read-only, won't work on the current generation of Blu-ray players since the hardware can only read the first two layers.

Blu-ray has struggled to make it in the home theater market, thanks to a consumer-splitting fight with HD DVD earlier in the decade that kept either format from gaining market share. In that time, video on demand and high-speed, high definition video delivery mechanisms like Netflix, Hulu and Roku have since come along.

On the PC side it's even worse. DVD-ROM remains firmly entrenched with few PC models shipping with Blu-ray by default. iSuppli said only 3.6 percent of PCs shipped with a Blu-ray drive in 2009 and by 2013 the research firm expects that number will reach 13 percent. For most consumers, DVD is proving to be good enough.

3D Data on the Horizon

And BDXL won't do anything to change that, said Van Baker, research director with Gartner. "It's not like people have been clamoring for more capacity. What [BDXL] allows them to do ultimately is put 3D data on there. I don't see that as saving the format," he told InternetNews.com.

"The thing that has eroded optical is we have so many alternative delivery mechanisms, and that's not changing. If anything, the number of services and vehicles you can use to get content is increasing. So who needs optical anymore?" Baker added.

As for PCs, even a 100GB drive is rather useless in an era where Seagate, Western Digital and other drive makers are shipping 2TB hard drives for $99. "Blu-ray doesn’t solve the problem because the drives for the most part are read-only drives and have low capacity. It's not like you can use this huge capacity thing to back up your important stuff," said Baker.

Andy Patrizio is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.