Garden City (NY) - TDK has announced a prototype Blu-ray disc that can store a massive 200 GB of data. The single-sided, six layer disc can store up to 18 hours of high definition video. TDK also said lower capacity 50 GB discs will start selling next week.

The 200 GB disc will be protected by a hard coating called DURABIS2. The coating stands up to the industry's steel wool rubbing test and resists dust, scratches and fingerprints. More information about the coating can be seen here.

The 50 GB discs are available in write-once and rewritable formats. TDK claims that the discs can last more than 50 years and have no performance degradation after being overwritten 10,000 times.

The write-once 50 GB Blu-ray discs will sell for around $45 each, while the re-recordable discs will sell for around $60 each.