Future Blu-ray Format Announced: BDXL

If you think that the Blu-ray standard represents exquisite film quality and mass optical storage, you might want to think again, as the “sequel” of sorts is en route. It comes in the form of “BDXL” (must’ve taken minutes to come up with that one), which essentially doubles the number of layers on a BD-ROM. Current BD-ROM’s top-out at 50GB, but BDXL will increase this to 128GB for write-once (for content companies) and 100GB for re-writeable discs.

I’m not quite certain of the difference in company vs. consumer storage density, but if I had to guess, it’s so that content creators can fill up their own discs to exceed what a consumer disc can hold, making direct ripping a non-option. Given that current Blu-ray rips can be compressed to fit even on a DVD, I don’t think this limitation is going to thwart much piracy if history speaks for itself.

It does appear that BDXL is to be much more than a Blu-ray disc with additional storage, but that extra storage can help in the future once 3D Blu-ray’s hit the mainstream. As it stands, I am fairly certain that a Blu-ray disc can only hold one master copy of a movie, and if it’s 3D, I believe that a non-3D copy is unable to co-exist on the disc, unless space allows. Given that 3D movies could easily take upwards of 40GB or more, it’s easy to understand why a 50GB disc is a bit limiting.

The unfortunate thing is that BDXL discs will not be compatible with current players, due to the blue laser not being powerful enough. That’s unfortunate for anyone who’s sunk a bunch of money into their current setup, but this is a technology that’s not likely to hit the consumer’s hands for quite a while, and it’s unlikely that when it does see the light of day, that it would be overly expensive (compared to original Blu-ray players).

I’d also be interested in seeing if BDXL will try to spearhead movie resolutions that go beyond 1080p, such as 1440p (2560×1440). Unfortunately, even with 128GB discs, we’re still a ways off from 2160p video (3840×2160)!

Thanks to Psi* for tipping us up on this BDXL news!

So, is BDXL something we really need? With hard drives now storing multiple terabytes of data and flash memory now crawling into the triple digits of gigabytes of storage space, Blu-ray, which once looked so vast, is starting to feel a little small. BDXL is sure to be ungodly expensive on release, so businesses and consumers will have to be certain of their need for the technology before they sign on.