I work for the largest manufacturer of cd-rom's in the world. The highest 

speed that we will "guarantee" that a rom will read at is 4x. The problem 

isn't vibration, because most manufacturer's have machinery that will reject a 

disk if it has the slightest vibration. The problem is the space between pits 

(what the laser reflects off of) is so small that at high speeds the sensor 

that reads the laser gets confused and thinks the last pit is still being 

read, when it's actually reading the current pit. Most drives will reread that 

track, but it slows the drive down in the process.
    6x and 8x drives still work fine, but they aren't "guaranteed" by most 

disc manufacturers. There's a new technology that is called "blue light" 

lasers. It's a different type of laser that can read smaller tracks and pit 

spaces at much higher speeds. CD-ROM's made with "blue light" can hold a 

little over 5 gig of data. The new TVCD's, or video cd's, that Sony is 

producing use this type of laser. It allows them to have mutiple movie tracks 

on the same cd. (ie LetterBox, TV size, director voice over, etc.)
    The only thing is, I don't think the CD size movie's are going to fly. 

People will have to buy a whole new player that doesn't even record. I think 

it's another MiniDisk disaster for Sony. Oh well, we are making ton's of 

PlayStation discs, who know's? (I work for Sony, by the way.)


Logan Orion