According to Sony Europe’s Recording Media & Energy division, Blu-ray discs will begin shipping this month (March, 2006) in Europe. Only single-layer discs will be available, for now, but that’s still 25GB of available data. In mid-March, Blu-ray Disc Rewritables (BD-RE) will be shipped out, and in April Blu-ray Disc Recordables (BD-R) will be available. These first Blu-ray discs will support 2x writing speeds, which equates to 72Mbps (9 MB/s).