Mirrors being used to improve Blu-ray quality & capacity

French researchers have found a rather simple new trick that is showing promise for improving the picture quality and storage capacity of future Blu-ray players and discs: Mirrors.

Anne Sentenac of the Fresnel Institute in Marseille, France and her team were looking for a way to sharpen the focus of microscopic 3D images when they discovered that a specifically shaped mirror could reflect more light into areas that were previously dim with other techniques. While the mirrors help to better illuminate microscopic objects, they will also allow the lasers of DVD and Blu-ray players to burn more detailed 3D patterns.

“If you want to create a 3D pattern which must have a very good spatial resolution, you need to manipulate light to burn the material exactly where you want,” says researcher Mathias Fink of Denis Diderot University, Paris.

The technique also reduces the length of the laser’s beam spot, which would make future devices capable of burning several more layers into discs than what is possible with current disc writers. According to Sentenac, it is feasible that next-generation discs could be created with 60 layers.

To put that into perspective, the new technology would nearly double the number of layers in the 1 terabyte Blu-ray disc shown off by TDK at the Ceatec Japan trade show last month, bringing 2 terabyte discs within reach.

And since the researchers describe their new light-reflecting technique as “simplified”, that means consumers will be able to get the resulting Blu-ray players and discs at a low price, right? Well, probably not, but since these products are likely a few years off we can still hope.