Plasmon Exhibits Working Blue Laser DVD Drive

tedgyz writes "CDR-Info has an article describing the first working prototype of a blue-violet laser optical disk drive. The drive boasts 30GB of storage, dubbed Ultra Density Optical (UDO). The article has technical details and images of the drive and media." We've been hearing about the advantages of blue light for seemingly years now. It's cool to see a product prepare for market that actually uses it.

Comments

Awfull read/write speed?

[NorthDude]

Is it me or it would take an awfull lot of time to fill in this drive?

At 4MB/sec and a total capacity of 30 gig, it would take 2 hours and 8 minutes to burn the media.
And half that time to read it all?!?

Cartridges

[Sophrosyne]

Thank God they used cartridges in this thing! That solves a plethora of headaches.
Lets hope that the big software makers like Sony/Matsushita et al. decide to use cartridges when they release their (possibly blue laser) HD-DVD players next year (presumably).
Nothing is worse than having media skip from a mere fingerprint or a slight scratch- especially when you are watching a movie!

Re:Not when you see the price

[LibertineR]

With the current reliability of hard drives outside of RAID 5, this might be worth the money. I dont like having to devote 5 drives to a SCSI Array just to insure I dont lose data. If I can move a lot of rarely used crap over to a disk of that size, I think it would be a good deal.

I've had 3 Seagate 18Gb Ultra SCSI drives die in the last 6 months.

How resistent to dust and scratches?

[haggar]

I am very well aware of the rendundant coding used to provide for a certain amount of resliance of the data, both on CDs and DVDs, but at a certain point when the data density becomes this high, I would imagine that the media would lose data when you just touch it.

One thing that would put me at ease is a kind of media that is completely hermetically protected by a transparent plastic shell. Perhaps a stationary disk while the reader is the one to rotate. That way you wouldn't even need the hole for the rotating spindle.

OTOH, with 30 GB, I can imagine I could put my whole collection of classical CD music on 5 UDOs, uncompressed. Or they will think about some abherration such as AudioDVD, so that the whole 30 GB will be just enough for some 60 minutes of music....

I may be nitpicking, but...

[amalcon]

"Plasmon Exhibits Working Blue Laser DVD Drive"

This is not DVD. It's an optical disk drive, which uses much of the same technology as DVD, but is definitely not the same specification. You would not be able to read a blue-laser disc in any 100% DVD-compliant drive.

Optical discs that can hold more than CD's are not necessarily them DVD's.

Re:Not when you see the price

[Telastyn]

RAID still won't save you from user failure. Archives and backups are good :]