Millenniata, a company known for ultra long-lasting DVDs with special coating, said this week that it will offer ulltra-durable Blu-ray M-Discs in the second quarter of 2013, increasing both the storage capacity and the accessibility of the M-Disc.

The announcement marks a major step forward in permanent data storage solutions for businesses and consumers by making the M-Disc available in all the standard optical disc formats. The new Blu-ray M-Discs will be writable and readable on any Blu-ray combo drive – an enormous step for Millenniata, as the initial DVD M-Discs could only be recorded using special DVD drives. The Blu-ray M-Discs will also offer at least five times the amount of storage as the standard 4.7GB M-Disc.

The other major advance in the growing world-wide acceptance of the M-Disc DVD and the forthcoming Blu-ray M-Disc is the marketing and distribution partnership with Imation Corp., under which the latter distribute both the M-Disc and Blu-ray M-Disc under Imation’s TDK, Memorex and Imation brands.

Ritek Corp., a leading manufacturer of optical storage media in the world, will produce the new Blu-ray M-Disc as part of its manufacturing agreement with Millenniata. In addition, Ritek has signed a license agreement with Millenniata to distribute and co-brand both the DVD and Blu-ray M-Discs through its established distribution and reseller channels as a secondary distribution channel for the M-Disc products behind Imation.

Millenniata produces the M-Disc, which provides data loss prevention by laser etching data (files, photos, videos, etc.) into an inorganic rock-like material that is not available from any other recordable media.

Currently, only M-Disc compatible drives can write to the DVD version of M-Disc, but it can be read in any DVD drive. Millenniata partner LG Electronics offers an affordable M-Ready optical drive for customers who want the peace of mind of having their important information stored forever.  

Additionally, Acer is now offering a permanent storage solution to its global customers with the integration of M-Disc compatible Hitachi LG Data Storage (HLDS) DVD and Blu-ray optical drives in Acer computers. The M-Disc Ready drives are available on the recently launched M series of notebooks under Acer’s Aspire range. Hitachi-LG Data Storage, Inc. (HLDS) manufactures the M-Disc compatible drives in partnership with Millenniata.

Tags: Millenniata, DVD, M-Disc, Blu-ray