As many of you might know Maxell, TY and Mitsubishi all have announced LTH BD-R some weeks ago. The LTH BD-R is based on an organic dye. This should cut down costs of production for BD-R media.
TY and Mitsubishi BD-R are now available in stores across Japan and YSS already bought some TY and Mitsubishi LTH BD-R discs.
The manufacturer for both brands is TY and the MID is TYG-BD Y01.
The Maxell Discs are not available at the moment.
Since these are made with a organic dye not all BD burners and drives can read them. According to YSS the PS3 for example can not read LTH BD-R discs and LG GGW-H20N is not able to burn but read these. Hopefully this will change with future firmware updates.
Some links:
TY and Mitsubishi LTH BD-R info:
http://homepage2.nifty.com/yss/bdr_lth/bdrlth01.htm
Some pictures of the Mitsubishi BD-R:
http://yss.cocolog-nifty.com/.shared...r130n5_700.jpg
http://yss.cocolog-nifty.com/.shared...r130n5_600.jpg

Nice!!

Koba, can you get me the serial and hub codes on those discs (if it's possible?)??

If PS3 can't read and GGW-H20N can't burn, then...

Ok, among others, Panasonic standalone blu-ray recorder and Pioneer blu-ray drive will be released soon (summer 2008) with support to read/burn this media.

Ok, I've gotten word that TY is deffinately not handling production of Mitsubishi's LTH BD-Rs. TY does their own production, Mitsubishi does their own production (at MKM Japan). The stampers and dye are the same though.

Thanks for the info on these everyone, hope firmware updates will enable these drives to read these.

I really hope prices for these will drop well below the ~$15 a piece BD's are going for now.

BD-Rs will hit $7-$8 very soon. $10-$12 is already normal. That's not even LTH media

Most certainly firmware updates will help. Look at the Plextor product page for the PX-B920a:

http://www.plextor.be/products/px-b9...oice=PX-B920SA

It says "(SL LTH)" and since the Plextor seems to be a LG GGW-H20N both drives are likely LTH capable hardware wise. The only question that remains is if Plextor is doing their own FW. Somehow i doubt that.

That's very encouraging news to hear to hear, thanks Dolphinius_Rex

Saying that a drive supports something is not the same as actually doing it. You don't have to look very far to find examples of similar claims that didn't work out. The reverse can also be true, drives that don't "support" a new media type may actually play it well enough. (burning is a different thing of course).

It says "SL LTH" in the list of writing as well as reading support ...

Current LG GGW 20 firmware can only burn slower with that new organic Dye media.
Updates required, means would be the same for Plextor, Buffalo ...
LTH will appear later this year, so no worries.

So MKM uses TY Manufacturer ID and TY Media Type ID. Well that would be a first for MKM.....

It's not unprecidented though, MKM uses Panasonic's MID for DVD-RAM for instance.

Also, I highly doubt it will continue like this. By the time it reaches North America it very well may be a proper MKM code.

Getting details on serials for both types of discs (Mitsubishi brand and That's brand) would be good though, and I'll try to pick the brain of one of my other sources who might be able to shed a little more light on things.

I am still searching for information on serials. If I find something I will post it here.
BTW according to Amazon.jp the Maxell LTH will go on sale on the 10th. Price at Amazon is 930 Yen (1US$ is 102 Yen as of today)
I am sure YSS will buy one of these.
But I dont accept Maxell LTH Discs to be produced by Maxell since they announced to retreat from optical disc manufacturing in Japan by end of march (Brand name will survive but discs will be 100% OEM from Taiwan and other makers). Maxell is going to close down the optical media division and all employees working on Disc production and sales are going to be transferred to a new division called Consumer Sales Division.

Usually price of media in Japan is higher than in the States. if Maxel LTH is going out @ March 10 at amazon.jp for 930 yen ~~ US$9, will regular BD-R media price go down to compete with LTH?

Well LTH uses organic dye and production costs are lower than the normal BD-R discs. Thats the reason for producing LTH type BD-R discs. I dont think normal BD-R can compete (price wise) with LTH in the long run.

But if demand of LTH is high because its cheaper and (current) burners are capable to use it after firmware updates, then regular BD-R media will be forced to reduce they price, don't you think?

Unless supply is low because only a few manufacturers producing LTH, which is the case... hmm..

OK YSS got his hands on Maxell LTH BD-R.
Manufacturer ID is [TYG-BD] and Media Type ID is [Y01] which is the same as TY and Mitsubishi. This is nothing unexpected since Maxell stops production of Optical Media in Japan.
Some links:
http://homepage2.nifty.com/yss/bdr_lth/bdrlth01.htm
http://yss.cocolog-nifty.com/yss/200...droe_05dd.html

As expected indeed.

What other companies out there except Yuden and Mitsubishi actually have the capability to develop and market a new type of dye? I can't think of any other manufacturer of optical discs so it'd have to be a cooperation between a manufacturer and some chemical corporation like Ciba (who did Phthalocyanine).

Even at $7 for a BD-R (25GB), they'd still be more expensive per GB than hard drives!

Fuji can develop dye and produce discs but thats about it....

Sure, but rem how long HDDs exist and how long BD is around...........

I'm looking for BD-R to become an alternative data backup with a cheap cost per GB. Currently, DVD-Rs take up this space, but it really is a pain to backup 1TB of data onto them.

Come back in 1 year and you will be happy.

As for data integrity, I would suggest using Tape/LTO or HDDs yet.