Slashdot Mirror
Sony Develops 25 GB Paper Disc
jaaron writes "TOPPAN Printing and Sony today announce the successful development of a 25GB paper disc based on Blu-ray Disc technology. Yes, that's right, *paper*. Details will be announced at the Optical Data Storage 2004 conference to be held from April 18th to April 21st at Monterey, California."
I thought IBM had done this already.
PDF on Blu-Ray Disk.
Seems like they would be very easy to damage.
Wow, it must write in REALLLLY tiny letters.
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
Now you can pass notes with BANDWIDTH!
There go my plans for a paperless office.
Man, that punchcard has gotta have teeny-tiny holes.
When I was in college, I could cram 50GB of information on a 3x5 crib sheet by writing really really small.
Well, I guess that's one way to ensure a bit more privacy...
Your warez stash being raided? Eat the evidence!!
I wonder how this new disc would deal with heat, though. Since most reading devices--and just being inside a closed space--produces heat. Heat and paper aren't necessarily a Good Thing.
i dont know if i can write small enough on the paper to beat the storage capacity. Can I at least use the backside?
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
A paper disk huh?
Sounds like yet another Sony product to wipe our asses with...
Here's a picture of the 25GB disc. It's a little big right now, but once they up the density, I'm sure you'll see it in more consumer products.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Archeologists ten thousand years from now will wonder why the march of civilization ended in the twenty-first century. They really should be working on a STONE disk, don't you think?
Here's the full text, but you can see it by simply copying & pasting the URL into a new tab/browser window:
TOPPAN and Sony Successfully Develop 25GB Paper Disc
Tokyo, Japan, Apr 15, 2004 - (JCN Newswire) - TOPPAN PRINTING CO., LTD (TSE: 7911) and Sony Corporation (TSE: 6758) today announce the successful development of a 25GB paper disc based on Blu-ray Disc technology. Details will be announced at the Optical Data Storage 2004 conference to be held from April 18th to April 21st at Monterey, California.
Using the disc-structure of Blu-ray Disc technology, the new paper disc has a total weight that is 51% paper. The two companies jointly began this optical disc project approximately a year ago. Blu-ray Disc is commonly known for allowing more than 2 hours of high-definition program recording.
Hideaki Kawai, Managing Director, Head of Corporate R&D Division, TOPPAN CO., LTD commented: "Using printing technology on paper allows a high level of artistic label printing on the optical disc. Since a paper disc can be cut by scissors easily, it is simple to preserve data security when disposing of the disc".
Masanobu Yamamoto, Senior General Manager of Optical System Development Gp., Optical Disc Development Div., Sony Corporation said: "Since the Blu-ray Disc does not require laser light to travel through the substrate, we were able to develop this paper disc. By increasing the capacity of the disc we can decrease the amount of raw material used per unit of information."
The worldwide production of optical discs is approximately 20 billion per year and optical discs are being adopted widely. The combination of paper material and printing technology is also expected to lead to a reduction in cost per disc and will expand usage.
TOPPAN and Sony will continue development of the disc for practical use.
About Sony Corporation
Sony Corporation (TSE: 6758) is a leading manufacturer of audio, video, game, communications, key device and information technology products for the consumer and professional markets. With its music, pictures, computer entertainment and on-line businesses, Sony is uniquely positioned to be the leading personal broadband entertainment company in the world. Sony recorded consolidated annual sales of approximately $62 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2003. For further information, please visit the Sony Corporation home page at: www.sony.net/
About Toppan Printing Co Ltd.
Toppan Printing Co., Ltd. (TSE: 7911), since its founding in 1900, has played key roles in worldwide leadership of the printing industry, generated global acclaim and US$10 billion in revenues. Today, the Company's operations extend beyond conventional lines of printing and show strong performances in each field, including securities and cards, commercial printing, publications printing, packaging, industrial materials,and electronics. Especially in the electronics field, Toppan boasts the largest share of the world market for liquid-crystal color filters. For further information, please visit the Toppan Printing Co Ltd. home page at: www.toppan.co.jp/english/
Contact:
Sony Corporation
Gerald Cavanagh
Gerald.Cavanagh@jp.sony.com
Tel: +81-3-5448-2200; Fax: +81-3-5448-3061
exactly how long will this paper last before it starts decomposing in some way?
It is when you factor in what becomes of those 'cheap discs' when they end their life cycle and end up in a landfill.
How many paper discs would you need to fit the Library of Congress? Oh, nevermind.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
TOPPAN and Sony Successfully Develop 25GB Paper Disc
Tokyo, Japan, Apr 15, 2004 - (JCN Newswire) - TOPPAN PRINTING CO., LTD (TSE: 7911) and Sony Corporation (TSE: 6758) today announce the successful development of a 25GB paper disc based on Blu-ray Disc technology. Details will be announced at the Optical Data Storage 2004 conference to be held from April 18th to April 21st at Monterey, California.
Using the disc-structure of Blu-ray Disc technology, the new paper disc has a total weight that is 51% paper. The two companies jointly began this optical disc project approximately a year ago. Blu-ray Disc is commonly known for allowing more than 2 hours of high-definition program recording.
Hideaki Kawai, Managing Director, Head of Corporate R&D Division, TOPPAN CO., LTD commented: "Using printing technology on paper allows a high level of artistic label printing on the optical disc. Since a paper disc can be cut by scissors easily, it is simple to preserve data security when disposing of the disc".
Masanobu Yamamoto, Senior General Manager of Optical System Development Gp., Optical Disc Development Div., Sony Corporation said: "Since the Blu-ray Disc does not require laser light to travel through the substrate, we were able to develop this paper disc. By increasing the capacity of the disc we can decrease the amount of raw material used per unit of information."
The worldwide production of optical discs is approximately 20 billion per year and optical discs are being adopted widely. The combination of paper material and printing technology is also expected to lead to a reduction in cost per disc and will expand usage.
TOPPAN and Sony will continue development of the disc for practical use.
About Sony Corporation
Sony Corporation (TSE: 6758) is a leading manufacturer of audio, video, game, communications, key device and information technology products for the consumer and professional markets. With its music, pictures, computer entertainment and on-line businesses, Sony is uniquely positioned to be the leading personal broadband entertainment company in the world. Sony recorded consolidated annual sales of approximately $62 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2003. For further information, please visit the Sony Corporation home page at: www.sony.net/
About Toppan Printing Co Ltd.
Toppan Printing Co., Ltd. (TSE: 7911), since its founding in 1900, has played key roles in worldwide leadership of the printing industry, generated global acclaim and US$10 billion in revenues. Today, the Company's operations extend beyond conventional lines of printing and show strong performances in each field, including securities and cards, commercial printing, publications printing, packaging, industrial materials,and electronics. Especially in the electronics field, Toppan boasts the largest share of the world market for liquid-crystal color filters. For further information, please visit the Toppan Printing Co Ltd. home page at: www.toppan.co.jp/english/
Contact:
Sony Corporation
Gerald Cavanagh
Gerald.Cavanagh@jp.sony.com
Tel: +81-3-5448-2200; Fax: +81-3-5448-3061
But what if there are hanging chads? Is that bit a one or a zero?
I talked about this with a friend, though not Blu-Ray. I think we figured it using a 300 DPI printer with 8.5 X 11 sheets of paper. A dot of black ink would be a 1. No dot would be a 0. It turns out that the capacity is pretty low. I'd post the math, but I'm pretty sure I'd mess it up somewhere.
I think we decided it would get interesting if full color was used and different colors meant different binary combos.
Anyway, good on them if the discs can be made for cheaper than current DVDs.
Imagine what this could do for the rental business. Now, I'm not about to get rid of my DVDs, and I hope they don't stop selling them: I rather like "owning" a movie I can play whenever Iike.
But getting on an airplane, and instead of "renting" a movie, I just but the cheap $2.00 one. This is what DiVX could have been without the annoying DRM and phone calling back method.
If I want to try out a game, such as "Jak and Daxter 14: Goatees for Everybody", I could get the cheap $5 full version paper demo, try it out, and when the disk finally breaks down say "Well, I can either buy another $5 version and finish the game, or pay $30 for the full version".
Either way, Sony doesn't come across looking evil, and I get what I want.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
From the article:
The worldwide production of optical discs is approximately 20 billion per year and optical discs are being adopted widely.
What is it minus AOL?
Extending this thread, it's too bad Sony didn't work on this with P The "Bounty" version of the AOL disk could pre-emptively clean up those annoying coffee drips and the "Charmin" version, well the AOL disks would finally actually be useful.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Awesome! One third of the way there.
Now all we need is a Rock based disk and a Scissors based disk. Then have them fight it out for world dominance.
"good old rock, nothing beats rock!"
no
I'm reminded of the old Commodore 1541 5.25" floppy disk drive, that could format a paper plate without errors.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"Using the disc-structure of Blu-ray Disc technology, the new paper disc has a total weight that is 51% paper"
Its kinda like saying WinBlows is better then Linux, but after reading the fine print: "the systems were judged by 100 people, 51 being microsoft employees..."
Yes its paper under the text books (congrats on pulling it off) but then again its also 49% not paper, probably good old plastics...
.. accessorize my Paper PC (ZDNet announcment)
>since a paper disc can be cut by scissors easily,
Yep. Scissors cut paper disc, paper disc cuts fingers, fingers bleed on scissors, causing them to rust.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
So Dilbert was right, smaller fonts can save on disk space.
This will certainly make partitioning much easier being able to use scissors instead of software. Partitioning on the hardware level. Imagine that. ;-)
while true ; do echo this is my sig; done
So will we still call them CD burners? It'll be like Farenheit 451. CD burners will be used to destroy data and some of us will remember when CD burners actually wrote data.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
If they can solve the problem of data loss from folding a disk. (I guess it can be done using massive redundancy).
We can send share data by throwing paper air planes at each other.
How cool is that?
You know you've been on slashdot too long when you ready that game title and think
"oooh. that's nasty"
oh wait, goaTEES.
Steven V.
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
Now my new set of AOL coasters will be absorbant!
after Sony releases the new College-ruled version.
The office toilet is always out of paper - now Sony has finaly provided a "backup"...
Do you think it will come in extra soft? 3 layers?
We can now put information down on paper!!!
Just think of what we can do now!
You could like....put a whole book or something on it!
Nah...that'll never work.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
So is this good or bad for the environment? Can these disks be recycled? Can they be made from recycled paper? Do they contribute less to landfills, or do they result in more trees getting chopped?
I'm honestly having trouble coming up with a practical application for this. I RTFA and learned (I think) that they're using "DVD-like" technology, but that the substrate is (51% by weight) paper, not acrylic and aluminum. The advantage? "It's easier to cut with scissors," states the article.
What possible benefit does this present. Someone help me out.
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
true 25GB isn't enought space for the LoTR super-extended-extra-long-aren't-you-glad-you can-pause-it-to-go-to-the-bathroom edition
There is no need to get up to go; as the movie is printed on its own toilet paper.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
On a side note - man, the Japanese are really good at making things out of wood and paper, aren't they?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Then, if you get raided by "the man" your can simply ignite them like a magician. *POOF* No more incriminating evidence!
You mean.... your illicit copy of "Cheech and Chong Up in Smoke"... up in smoke?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
They tried stuff like this, it sucked.
Note, that's not to be confused with the DivX standard used by those nasty "pirates". There are other types of disposable DVDs floating around. The main one that comes to mind now is the one that oxidizes when you open the package.
Anyway, it especially pissed off the Slashdot crowd.
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
it's not the cost of the recording media that makes movies and music expensive, otherwise CDs would've come down in price like the industry promised (ha!) when the technology first came out.
if it was possible, you could come up with digital video disks made from cow chips, and they would still charge the same price for a movie.
Now movie rental stores will be asking...
"paper or plastic"
Sony may be on to something here. Imagine encoding information onto the paper using some sort of symbol system that humans could be taught to interpret just by looking at the sheets? No computer necessary?
Sheets of paper encoded like this could be cut square (most efficient use of space) and then bound by the edge so datasets larger than one-sheet's-worth could be looked at in a sequential fashion.
These things are likely to be kind of bulky; if it ever takes off, there might be public buildings where people could borrow from a large repository of these paper-encoded datasets.
This is kind of mind-boggling; it is likely to be years before Sony or anyone else takes it to this next step.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Apparently, there's an official industry consortium for the technology, with the list of on-board companies including Dell, HP, Hitachi, Pioneer, Sony, and many more. I also found this short intro on the underlying technology, which explains:
Large recording capacity up to 27GB:
By adopting a 405nm blue-violet semiconductor laser, with a 0.85NA field lens and a 0.1mm optical transmittance protection disc layer structure, it can record up to 27GB video data on a single sided 12cm phase change disc. It can record over 2 hours of digital high definition video and more than 13 hours of standard TV broadcasting (VHS/standard definition picture quality, 3.8Mbps)
Hey, is that a spam server I see?
.. *swallow* !!
Not any more..
*eject*
My dog ate my presentation and backup of quicken.
Look how far we've come from paper tape to paper disc!
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
Hey won't it be nice to roll a fat one with a longhorn logo on it.
Got Code?
No. They'll call it "two-ply".
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
How about a mobius strip
Next thing you know, they'll make the disc readable by the naked eye, patent it and then start suing printers.
if it was possible, you could come up with digital video disks made from cow chips, and they would still charge the same price for a movie.
You haven't seen much of what's come out of Hollywood lately, have you?
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
Of course, they'd probably just use the labels and keep the disks blank.
Ok... so if you made discs out of all the books in the Library of Congress... how many Libraries of Congress could you store?
Has anyone posted an item recently on the latest audio encoding advances which make it difficult to make digital copies?
The music industry is working on a new type of CD. It is not that compact, actually: I am guessing that the "medium pizza" size is to make it difficult to actually steal from music stores.
The discs are black, and instead of being encoded with laser-readable bits, the surface is covered with one very long spiralled indentation (or groove). Information engraved in this indentation can be read through a tiny stylus and converted into sound.
To further thwart the digital p2p "rip and post it on Kazaa" world, the audio technology is actually analog instead of digital.
The technology required to burn these things is rather bulky and expensive. Prototypes have been produced by a new audio company called "Decca" (Digital Encoding Concern Company - Advanced), some of the prototypes have turned up at garage sales. These are typically stamped with very old dates (1938? 1941?) to confuse people.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"If I want to try out a game ... I could get the cheap $5 full version paper demo, try it out, and when the disk finally breaks down..."
They could use PD-RW (Paper Disc Rewritable), which uses disappearing ink instead of regular ink that is used for PD-R. As a bonus, the burner doubles as a disc label printer.
>Since the disc is made out of paper, and the current number of optical discs is about 20 billion per year, it is easy to use even more trees.
Hopefully, they'll be able to manufacture them using recycled paper.
The Truth About Slashdot
I guess advances in technology still can't help mother nature.
s/head crash/no ink/g
Please, oh please, tell me I dont have to wrangle through OfficeDepot looking for ink cartridges for my disks now.
Intelligence is like four wheel drive, having it just means you'll get stuck in more remote places.
Actually the Blu-Ray discs hold 25GB in a single sided, single layer medium. That's one of the reasons that they can use a paper disc, the laser beam doesn't have to travel beyond the initial recording medium to a second layer.
Wait, isn't that the same... Oops, I forgot! I said Music Industry.
I meant that now AOL can reduce the price of their CDs.
...The Photocopier.
-JT
So instead of AOL coasters we'll now be receiving AOL kleenex?
Nyo nyo, the Neko Boy has spoken.
Last year my 30 year old daughter informed me of how much data a 7th grade student could put on the six sides of a new yellow pencil. From a few feet away it looks like it has been chewed on so the teacher asks no questions. Use only three sides and it even stays hidden when you put the pencil down.
If IBM had been able to use this technology, no telling how much data they could have put on paper disks! About 2 gigs along the edge even.
You know that some joke company will come out with Flash paper-based discs.
Personally? I can't wait until some sucker asks if they can borrow a Paper-Rom (or whatever we'll term them), and he hears a "Whumf!" coming from his drive after he starts trying to burn something to it.
The present CDs are very close to 1.1 mm thick, although I do have one that is close to 1.5-mm thick. THe diameter of a thick black hair is about 0.11-mm and that of a blond (natural) is about 0.08-mm. When I pick up a (0.12 x 0.050)-mm particle (I work with those) I cannot tell which side of the tweezers if sticks to, and my tweezers are needle sharp.
But what if when you burn the CD, you burn the CD?!
"I have a new computer with one of those new Paper-ROMS and it seems to be acting up"
'What do you mean?'
"I went to staples and picked up some computer paper and cut it into a disk shape and put it in and now there is a burning smell coming from the drive"
more like AOL toilet paper
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
but it doesn't record to paper plates
My wording could have been more clear. The 1541 ACTED like it formatted a paper plate. You'd have to cut the plate, or other piece of cardboard to size, place it in the drive, and then run the format operation. This would proceed and conclude with no error message. This does not mean that the resulting paper disc was ready for Commodore data storage!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Which would still be susceptible to moisture wicking and bloating.
Microsoft Office has been succeptible to bloat for many years now. This wicking thing, that will be a new phenomemon.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
At the rate things are going, however, we're likely to run out of both at about the same time.
With trees, there's also the factor that forests are a good deal more than just trees, and trees do more than just stand there (like oil generally does). Problem is that nobody ever managed to put a price on oxygen manufacturing, pollution abatement, flood/drought/weather moderation or many of the other things that forests do.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.