TDK will unveil prototype 8cm Blu-ray Discs at the Consumer Electronics Show today.
Called Mini BD-R (Blu-ray Disc Recordable) and Mini BD-RE (Blu-ray Disc Rewritable), the discs are designed to be used in future high-definition camcorders and can hold 16.5GB of data. By comparison, a conventional 12cm single-layer Blu-ray Disc can accommodate up to 25GB of data.
Several companies have said they are considering developing camcorders based on Blu-ray Disc media.
Optical disc media is a popular storage format for some camcorder users because of the ease with which recorded movies can be played back in DVD players. However the industry has hit a stumbling block with the introduction of high-definition camcorders because conventional DVD media doesn't support high-definition, and smaller versions of Blu-ray Disc or the competing HD DVD format haven't yet been developed.
To get around this problem Sony and Panasonic last year developed a new format called AVCHD, which seeks to store an Mpeg4-encoded, high-definition video on a conventional DVD.
The technology gets around one problem by allowing storage of high-definition content on a conventional recordable DVD. However in most cases it doesn't solve the playback problem because the vast majority of DVD players on the market don't offer support for AVCHD.
