AOD

Advanced Optical Disc. Created by Toshiba in conjunction with NEC, the AOD format is a more recent development than the Blu-Ray Disc format, but is supported by the DVD Forum - a consortium that includes all nine members of the 'Blu-Ray Disc Founders' (see Blu-Ray Disc Format). The AOD format uses blue laser technology to store up to 15GB of data on a single-layered read-only 12cm optical disc. A dual-layered disc would hold 30GB, and a rewriteable version would hold 20GB. AOD is expected to offer long recording times by using MPEG-4 compression, which uses less data than MPEG-2.