Ricoh Develops Lens That Reads both Blu-ray and HD-DVD

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It seems Ricoh has stirred up the optical community with a new optical device that can read and write pretty much all standards out there. Read the snippit taken from the source.

"Trying to bridge the gap between next-generation optical disk formats, Ricoh said it has developed an optical component that reads and writes all disk formats—Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD, as well as DVD and CD—with one pickup and one objective lens.

Ricoh will show the optical device at the International Optoelectronics Exhibition '06 outside Tokyo on July 12-14. The company intends to offer the device to OEMs by year's end. The component is a 3.5-mm diameter, 1-mm thick round diffraction plate with minute concentric groves on both sides which function as a diffraction grating.

The diffraction plate is placed between lasers and an objective lens. The diffraction grating is designed to adjust a light beam to an optimum incident ray relative to the objective lens so that light focuses on the proper position for each disk format."

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