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Imation has announced that it will be bringing the fastest recordable Blu-Ray discs to the U.S. market under the TDK name.  The recording speed of these BD-Rs is 6X.  That might not sound very fast considering DVD and CD recording rates are in the double digits, but, keep in mind that Blu-Ray stores much more data than DVDs.  These 25GB per layer (up to 50GB for dual-layer) discs can transfer data at an awesome 216 Mbps.  That means it can transfer 25GB of data in 17 minutes.  That rate is equal to 20X DVD-Rs, but 25GB would require 6 DVDs as opposed to one BD.  These BD-Rs will be available this October; one BD-R will cost $13.99 and one BD-R dual layer will cost $32.99.

This news comes just three months after a Reuters report saying that the adoption rate of Blu-Ray is faster than the DVD adoption rate at the same time of its life cycle.  That can be pretty surprising considering an ABI survey from April 2008 showed most people aren’t buying Blu-Ray players just yet.  Although, with the rise of the HDTV, more Blu-Ray players would make sense.  Blu-Ray has a larger capacity that can hold uncompressed High-Definition video and completely uncompressed sound.  It is currently the best physical format for sound and video.

That last note is an important one—physical format.  A lot of content is distributed online now, iTunes even offers HD TV shows.  In terms of buying movies/TV shows, Blu-Ray wins mainly because it is uncompressed, can be easily transported, and has extra features that video files tend to lack.  It works for video games like fitting PS3 games onto a single disc and can have shorter load times with better looks and sound.  As far as transferring data between computers I doubt Blu-Ray would be all that useful.  The time it would take to backup your hard drive using Blu-Ray discs is enormous when you compare it to just hooking up an external hard drive to your computer.  These new BD-Rs cost over $0.50 per GB; you can easily get a hard drive at a much lower cost per GB.  As flash memory becomes even cheaper I wouldn’t be surprised if Blu-Ray is designated for video game and video distribution, but other types of portable storage will take place of the DVD for storing data and transferring data between people and computers.