TDK is keeping busy these days with developing optical media, and it's obvious which side of the next-gen battle they have decided to align themselves with. First, we heard the announcement of a mini BD-R capable of storing 16.5 GB of data, and now we see the manufacturer hit up the other end with the unveiling of a one-sided, six-layered Blu-ray disc that'll stash an incredible 200 gigabytes. That's bigger than my hard drive. Interestingly, this six-layered wonder is only four times the capacity of a regular BD-R. Either way, this is a far cry from the 4.7GB we're used to with single-layer DVD+/-Rs.via mobilemag
Hitachi is really packing things in—to storage discs, that is. 
I'm sorry. Fingerprint sensors just aren't as sexy as they were a few months ago. They're not exactly commonplace yet, but they're not really enough to set yourself apart from the competition either. That said, biometric protection is still a lovely feature to have, and it appears to be the primary selling point for the Mercury Data ES-SBD2 Bio Disk. There's no actual storage here -- you'll have to supply your own 2.5-inch hard disk drive -- but it does come with a fingerprint reader "to encrypt and protect your data." The styling cues, well, they're basically non-apparent. Let's just hope it comes cheap.
Toshiba has announced the SD-L902A HD-DVD drive for notebooks which is the world's slimmest and just 12.7 mm thick. It can record on HD DVD-R Single / Double layer discs as well as DVD-RAM, DVD±R SL/DL, DVD±RW, CD-R and CD-RW. Further details such as speed etc will be announced at Ceatec fair where the drive will be showcased at Toshiba's booth. It supports playback of HD DVD SL/DL, HD DVD-ROM, DVD and CD media. The SD-L902A has an ATAPI interface and 8MB buffer memory. 
