It was only recently that we saw 18X DVD writers hit the market and now the optical storage industry is jumping on to faster theoretical recording speeds.  These 18X drives are capable of writing to single-layer DVD recordable media at a little more than 23MBps, or about four minutes for the session data. 

Lite-On Corporation will be launching 20X DVD writers sooner than we thought. Taiwanese manufactures claim that production of 18X drives have already begun in July and the company will begin producing drives capable of 20X speeds a few months, in the last quarter of 2006.  The new drives are expected to write faster than 26MBps and possibly get DVD burn times down to three minutes for an entire disc.  The new drives will also be capable of writing to dual-layer media and across DVD+R, DVD-R and DVD-RAM as well.

Lite-On produces drives for companies such as Sony and NEC and has also recently taken over BenQ's optical drive manufacturing business including the production of its upcoming Blu-ray products.  Lite-On also plans to go on to produce the rival high-density HD-DVD optical format drives to expand across both markets.