There's a new twist on the concept of electronic paper. Sony and Toppan Printing have developed a paper disc that can store 25GB of data, using the next-generation optical drive format Blu-ray.

The new disc - 51 per cent of which is made of paper - is the result of a year-long collaboration between the two companies. As the Blu-ray technology does not require the (blue-violet) laser light to travel through the substrate, the discs do not have to be transparent.

'Using printing technology on paper allows a high level of artistic label printing on the optical disc,' said Hideaki Kawai, head of the Corporate R&D Division of Toppan, quoted on ME Asia Online. Another advantage he highlighted was the ease of destroying data to preserve security.

More details on the discs are expected to emerge at the Optical Data Storage 2004 conference, to be held next week in Monterey, California.

Developed to enable recording and rewriting of high-definition television (HDTV), Blu-ray enables over two hours of recording on a 27GB disc (about 13 hours of standard-definition television). More information can be found at www.blu-raydisc-official.org.

It was only yesterday that we reported that the DVD Forum was promoting the rival HD-DVD next-generation DVD format to Taiwanese DVD drive manufacturers. Blu-ray, however, has been grabbing the headlines again with the paper-based discs.

While Toshiba and NEC back the HD-DVD format (which is backwards compatible with DVD), Blu-Ray is backed by the likes of Sony, Pioneer, Samsung, Matsushita, Philips and Microsoft.

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