With HD-DVD a distant memory in our collective consciousness, now is the time to push Blu-ray to its technological limits. Pioneer today announced that it has successfully created a 16-layer Blu-ray disc with total capacity of 400GB (that's 25GB per layer--the same as a standard Blu-ray disc).

According to the company, the difficult in creating such a massive disc arises from problems in "obtain[ing] clear signals from each recording layer in a stable manner due to crosstalk from adjacent layers and transmission loss." Pioneer's technology has helped reduce crosstalk between adjacent disc layers, upping the playback quality for all 16 layers.

The company will present more information on the new high capacity discs at the nternational Symposium on Optical Memory and Optical Data Storage 2008 in Hawaii on July 13.