"Warner Brothers, a division of Time Warner media company, said in an interview that it would formally introduce its Total HD discs at the Consumer Electronics Show, which kicks off on the 8th of January. The new discs will be compatible with both Blu-ray and HD DVD players and may end the war between the two emerging formats. The initial dual-format Total HD disc should include a Blu-ray and an HD DVD layer, but eventually it may gain the third layer and provide DVD-compliance as well.

Both Blu-ray and HD DVD use 405nm wavelength laser to read data from the recordable media of the discs. However, the data layer of the Blu-ray discs is located 0.1mm from the disk’s surface, whereas the HD-DVD data layer resides 0.6mm deep from the disk’s surface. Warner’s engineers plan to create a disc with a Blu-ray top layer that works like a two-way mirror: it should reflect just enough blue light for a Blu-ray player to read, but it should also let enough light through for HD-DVD players to ignore the Blu-ray recording and find a second HD-DVD layer beneath, it was reported earlier. Theoretically, triple-layer DVDs can be created too, if DVD layer is located on the other side to the Blu-ray and HD DVD layers."

Consumers alike have been extremely frustrated at the constant bickering and inability for major media conglomerates to come to an agreement as to the high definition heir to the DVD. Instead of worrying about if your early purchase of either format player was the right one (why would anyone purchase a first gen HD product anyway?) you may be able to purchase a dual or triple format disc in the future. Even though these types of discs will probably result in a higher price, this is something consumers may be willing to pay to avoid headaches. Current HD-DVD and DVD combo discs are clearly more expensive than a single format disc, and what happens if one were to have a multi-format player and a multi-format disc? Look for more info as CES kicks off later this week!

X-bit Labs