On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 9:10 AM, Christa & Jay Toser <user5013@aol.com> wrote:

Point Three: On the internet downloads, yes we can have a dual-layer or Blue-Ray disk image. Wonderful. BUT in the physical world, we will have to stick with the standard DVD format. We must understand that much of the world will continue with older legacy formats for at least the next decade. Which means, the next release of the DVD will probably have to be a set of two discs.

Dual-layer disks are PART of the standard DVD format[0], and just about any DVD-ROM[1] will read a burned dual layer disk. There were issues with burned DL disks in very early consumer DVD players, but DVD-ROMs are more robust, especially if you use DVD+R DL disks[2].

The bigger issue is burners... DL burners were only really standard in the last 3 or 4 years, but anything can read them.

So you actually have it backwards... for internet downloads, you want single layer (DVD-5) images, but for physical mailings you want dual-layer images (DVD-9).

R C
[0] In fact the majority of commercial DVDs are dual-layer. Pressed dual-layer, not burned, but still dual-layer.
[1] I won't guarantee every device will, but even my ancient 2x DVD-ROM from ~1998 can read burned DL disks.
[2] Some older devices have trouble with -R DL disks if the two layers aren't burned to the same length.