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Flourescing(sp?) media uses 3D storage (holograms) to pack more data into a standard form-factor 120cm disc - albiet not as compact as 1cm, but they certainly could achieve that with.

These guys are still at it.. though when they wil release somethign to the market is anybody's guess. I was in brief contact with them over a particular application of their card technology.

Of course, they are attempting to develop for the commercial market, and include write-once and rewritable options. IMO, this is bigger 'news' though the trail seems to have gone stale on FD.

I want my terabytes on the desktop today, not a decade from now.

Found all this on their website www.c-3d.net (although they have www.constellation3d.com now too I see)
Yup re-writeable is in the works...or so they say:
"FMD/FMC presents a wide variety of potential media sizes and types (read only, write-able and re-writeable) for a broad range of applications."

..and regarding blue lasers:
"Research has shown that media containing up to a hundred layers are currently feasible, thereby increasing the potential capacity of a single card or disk to hundreds of Gigabytes. Use of blue lasers would increase the capacity potential to over 1 Terabyte."

They have that really cool ClearCard which has no moving parts, I'd rather have that that a five inch disk spining around, even if it were less than the 1 Terabyte capacity that the FM Disc is supposed to have. Soild state seems so much more advanced.

*sigh* Yeah two years is a long time when it was supposed to be out by now! But...
"The final delivery time will be based on the schedule of our business partners. As of now we expect to make our technology available to some markets by early 2003, with a full consumer roll out to follow"


Source: http://www.constellation3d.com/product_frameset.ht ml

Found all this on their website www.c-3d.net (although they have www.constellation3d.com now too I see)
Yup re-writeable is in the works...or so they say:
"FMD/FMC presents a wide variety of potential media sizes and types (read only, write-able and re-writeable) for a broad range of applications."

..and regarding blue lasers:
"Research has shown that media containing up to a hundred layers are currently feasible, thereby increasing the potential capacity of a single card or disk to hundreds of Gigabytes. Use of blue lasers would increase the capacity potential to over 1 Terabyte."

They have that really cool ClearCard which has no moving parts, I'd rather have that that a five inch disk spining around, even if it were less than the 1 Terabyte capacity that the FM Disc is supposed to have. Soild state seems so much more advanced.

*sigh* Yeah two years is a long time when it was supposed to be out by now! But...
"The final delivery time will be based on the schedule of our business partners. As of now we expect to make our technology available to some markets by early 2003, with a full consumer roll out to follow"


Source: http://www.constellation3d.com/product_frameset.ht ml

Constellation 3D partners include Warner Advanced Media Operations (a subsidiary of AOL Time Warner) and UK drive manufacturer Plasmon. See Constellation's company info.

Either way, I think that whoever is first to get a really high-capacity (tens of GB) consumer-level removable optical storage format on the market will be the one who defines the new standard, unless the later competitor is a lot cheaper or better.

Three words:

Fluorescent Multilayer Disc (FMD)

by Constellation3D

Current technology holds 100 GB, with 1 Gbps transfer rates. The technology is currently being deployed in the digital cinema arena, but I am looking forward to the day that this technology makes its way to the consumer market.

Does anyone remember this article posted some time back on Slashdot? This disc based has 10 layers and can hold up to 140Gb of data. This should be enough for your HD-TV needs. The company invovled is Constellation 3D and has more information on the technology on their web site. The only question is why no-one is trying to get this technology into our homes, instead of D-VHS?

Here's the link for the ClearCard:

http://www.constellation3 d.c om/products.html#clearcard

Wow, lots of points.

Like many others I think this new disk is irrelevant. For 1.3G they could just produce a double sided CD which would be backward compatible with every current device, provided you are will to flip the disk over. Also, I think the failure of 2 and 3 disk CD-ROM drives has shown that merely doubling the capacity isn't sufficient to get people to scrap their old hardware.

Regarding firmware upgrades, I know a lot of people that bought cheap Smart & Friendly CD-RW drives. Since Smart & Friendly is now out of business, I assume I will be out of luck when it comes to firmware upgrades.

Regarding alternative products, I thnk for recordable media, the recordable DVD formats have a significant headstart, so I think one of these (or a hybrid standard) will eventually win out.

As for pre-recorded media, in addition to DVD, there is a lot of work going on with flourescent disk layering (FMD), including Constellation 3D's 50G disks which are supposed to be available (at least for high-end uses) by the end of the year.