ZEN Technology

[Skotty]

Remember the Kenwood True-X drives featuring ZEN technology? At the time, they were the fastest CD-ROM drives (up to 72x) yet were dead silent (no disk spin noise). I loved them. Though they did have some reliability issues that needed improvement.

I've been waiting and waiting for similar drives to reappear for DVDs, but haven't seen anything. Back in 2000, supposedly a company named Afreey was planningo n using ZEN to build DVD drives, but nothing ever came of it. (see http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=52708. Also see http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1999_Dec_13/ai_58183512 )

Anyone have any news or thoughts on this? I sure would love to have a True-X DVD rom drive, even if it's not writeable. Maybe a company like Plextor, which likes to sell premium drives at premium prices, will buy into it someday?

 

[Rubycon]

Probably not.

DVD uses a 650 nanometer laser whereas CD uses a 780 nanometer laser. With shorter wavelengths your minimum achievable focus diameter is smaller hence smaller pits - and more data - can be read and recorded.

This presents a challenge with beam splitting, recombining and decoding streams at even a faster rate. In order to keep the prices reasonable the decoding processing, error correcting, etc. is not in line.

BluRay shortens the wavelength even more, upping the challenge even more so.