All- in- One DVD, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD Disc

Rivalry between Blu-ray, backed by Sony and HD-DVD, backed by Toshiba, resulted into format wars that leave end-users in a great shroud when talking about the future DVD successor of choice. To answer the bid of unsatisfied end-users, three Warner Brothers' engineers invented a disc that would put an end to the format war for good.

This ingenious optical medium is dubbed "multilayer dual optical disc" and has three separate layers: one for standard CD-DVD formats, a second one for Blu-ray content and a third one for HD-DVD information. This means that consumers will be able to choose the appropriate hardware without spending too much on single-format oriented devices that may not be widely accepted. This way, film producing companies won't be forced to favor one format over the other, delivering movies in all three formats on a single disc.

The three engineers are Wayne Smith, Alan Bell and Lewis Ostrover, who have already filed the patent application for the new optical medium. The ingenious disc can be recorded at different micro-depths according to each format. Blu-ray stores information at only 0.1 mm from the surface, while HD-DVD discs store it at about 0.6 mm.

The inventors claim that the future optical readers will incorporate film lasers that can read the top layer and can "see through" to the lower layers. And this is available for one side of the disc. Additional content could also be recorded on the other side of the disc.