[Bob P. @ Oct 4th 2007 10:34AM]

Will, replying here to you question down below so that you'll get the email notification.

The drive is a prototype, but that doesn't mean that other drives can't be upgraded to read the disks. A prototype can be the same hardware with just new firmware, it's just the first of it's kind.

The main problem with increasing the layers is the quality of light that can be read after it has been reflected back to the optics. Mathematically Blu-ray max's out at 8 layers. This can be determined by the strength of the laser, the reflectivity of the layers that the laser has to focus through, the distance the laser's light has to travel and the medium it has to travel through and finally the numerical aperture of the optics. The problem Blu-ray has had with with increasing the layers has mostly been with tracking and stability. At 4 layers you now have half as much light to work with than you did at 2 layers so your tracking and stability has to be much better. So the question is what have they done to solve this problem. If they had to add hardware then it can't be firmware updateable, but if they didn't and it's quite possible that they didn't, then they can update it with fw.

Sorry at work so I'm writing this a little bit at a time so it might be a little disjointed.