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What is a hybrid disc?

A hybrid disc is a single CD that unites a CD-ROM and a CD-R/RW. Providing the contrasting features of mass-producible read-only and write-once CD-ROM and rewritable CD-R/RW on the same disc, the hybrid disc will create opportunities for the birth of new business ideas.

One of the advantages of the hybrid disc is that you can write data to a specific area in the disc, although it looks like a CD-ROM. This writable area matters a great deal, because users can not only write their routine data to it, but they can also use it as an authentication area. It helps allow users to manage and control the content of the disc on their own by using the authentication mechanism.

As it also has the feature of being writable, you may provide hard-diskless operability to some software that doesn't need to be installed into your hard disk. The feature can also stem the increase of unnecessary files due to installation. The Internet and the hybrid disc complement each other and greatly contribute to enabling on-demand additions and modifications to CD content and reducing support costs.

Hybrid disc in which Ricoh's optical disc technologies are mobilized

Ricoh has been tackling the development of recording materials for use with optical discs since the 1980s, because we thought a disc that could record a large volume of data in a short time would be required in the future. As a result of those efforts, we launched the world's first write-once recording discs (WORM) that adopted pigment recording films in 1987, and CD-R discs in 1992. In addition, we developed CD-RW discs ahead of anyone else in the world, launched them in 1997, and added a new dimension to the CD world.

Ricoh's own material and stamper technologies that have been built up through developing these optical discs have been used for the development of the latest DVD+RW/+R.The hybrid disc has been developed by mobilizing the above-described optical disc technological resources Ricoh has built up over many years.

The world's best hybrid CD-R born through a newly developed hybrid stamper technology

When we created a ROM area with any of the conventional stamper technologies, we could not provide sufficient recording compatibility because the groove shape in the R area was different from that of a normal CD-R. For this reason, Ricoh developed its own hybrid stamper technology. The technology provides recording compatibility and playability equivalent to those of conventional CD-Rs by realizing a highly accurate groove shape.

Moving toward hybrid DVD

Currently developed Ricoh hybrid discs only include hybrid CD-Rs and CD-RWs, but Ricoh intends to use the technologies built up through the development of hybrid CDs to develop hybrid DVDs. Ricoh's future hybrid disc development will also surely fulfill the expectations of our customers.