This is from a Polish website so i'll translate it for you http://tech.wp.pl/kat,1009789,title,51-gigabajtowe-HD-DVD-oficjalnie-zatwierdzone,wid,9425189,wiadomosc.html?rfbawp=1196020337.714

The Executive Committee of the DVD Forum organization has officially accepted the specification of new three-layer HD-DVD discs. These would be able to store up to 51GB of information.

The new specification bears the name of HD DVD v. 2.0. It is worth noting the Toshiba announced initial research of these discs over 10 months ago - during the initial days of the year 2007 the japanese company declared they would be ready for a release in the summer months. Unfortunately work had been sluggish, causing the DVD Forum organization to wait until November before accepting the new format.

It is not known at present as to when retailers will recieve their first batch of 3-layer HD DVD movies. However, companies supporting the format foretell that, with this release, the HD DVD format will gain yet another advantage over Blu-ray. By this it is meant that the discs would be able to hold a greater amount of data, by 1GB, than the most space-gracious blu-ray discs (currently there are two options, single layer discs with the capacity of 25 GB and respectivley dual layer 50GB discs)

So what do you think about this? Seems to me that Sony better get to work on thos 100+ Gb discs that they talked about earlier. It seems that the "extra storage" arguement just got flushed down the toilet.

Can existing players read these discs with just a firmware update?

and Sony releases 75GB triple layer discs.. oh wait.. TDK has 200GB in development.. 51GB wont matter much. lol

I still want to know how 1 layer increased an extra 6GBs for the disc. Each layer is supposed to be 15GBs. It logically doesnt make sense unless the third layer is a bit thicker then its supposed to be.

^ Well let's have those discs first shall we? not to mention that it already is quite a bunch of money to buy a blu-ray disc, how much will you have to pay for those 50+Gb discs then? I'm not tech savvy so i won't tell you how the layers are divided in size, but they must have thought of something if it's coming, right?

After a while you have to start wondering what the additional space is useful for (in terms of movies).

This matters little to Sony, like ssj12 said before me; there are some truly massive BluRay discs under development.
BluRay will always have more space with the same amount of layers, so this seems like yet another product that boasts to be better than it's competition by developing trait(s) that they claim are unimportant in opposing products.

Smells like HD-DVD add-on for 360 and the Home copy in development all over again to me... Why bother? Strange tactic that; calling something redundant in the market, and then offering the very same thing in a different package!

They use a slightly higher areal density to fit 17 GB on each layer.

 thanks for answering that part

@NJ5 - the space will come in handy when we get to the super-HD levels (1440p+). Also it will be used for PC storage. 

Even the HD-DVD supporters will say that things just aren't looking good for HD-DVD right now.

 oh not the HD-DVd fans on eproductwars