DVD+RW Alliance increases rewrite speed to 8x

The DVD+RW Alliance has announced the release of final draft specifications for 8x rewriting on DVD+RW media produced by Hewlett Packard, MKM, Philips, Ricoh, Sony and Yamaha.

According to the industry association - which supports the Plus format for DVD recording - DVD+RW media and writers designed to this specification will able to rewrite a full 4.7GB DVD+RW in less than eight minutes.

The 8x DVD+RW discs themselves will be based on very fast phase-change materials, which can be rewritten at high speed, while the laser of the drive must be able to deliver short, high-power write-pulses to achieve the right thermal balance between the erase and write steps.

"8x DVD+RW rewriting is the next step in the DVD+R/+RW format roadmap after bringing write-once DVD+R to the maximum achievable 16x recording speeds," said Frank Simonis from Philips, who is chairman of the DVD+RW Alliance product promotions group.

The Alliance added that new DVD+RW writers and recorders that are designed to write according to the 8x rewrite specification are expected to become available from manufacturers in the following months.