Well before the first Blu-ray players launch in the US, the first media will be arriving in Europe, Sony has said today.

Single-layer Blu-ray Disc Rewritable media will be available in shops from mid-March, and single-layer write-once Blu-ray Disc Recordable media will be available from April. Sony is also set to launch dual-layer discs later this year.

Fritz Handtke, marketing and operations director at Sony Recording Media & Energy, said that the company will market Blu-ray media across the IT spectrum, from home PC owners to enterprise industrial archiving systems.

Sony's single discs store up to 25GB, enough for approximately two hours and 15 minutes of video at a rate of 24Mbps, or 10 hours and 30 minutes at 5Mbps.

The new generation media support 2x speeds which equates to a data transfer rate of 72Mbps.

Sony is not the only company targeting the data storage segment with Blu-ray. TDK has announced plans to enter the field, and will be pushing 25GB and 50GB discs as soon as possible.