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Movie Playback From 1TB Holographic Disc
qorkfiend writes "Optware Corp. has announced successful playback of digital movies on a new holographic recording disc with a reflective layer. Known as the Collinear Holographic Data Storage System, the disc has a one terabyte storage capacity and one gigabyte transfer speed. The disc size is 12cm, comparable to that of a DVD and a CD."
That's a big file format, and it will take a while to download.
First I will protect the internet from attack including This Land is My Land. And was Mark CueBall right about media size halting piracy? But, didn't we just read that size doesn't matter.
One gigabyte transfer speed?
Per second? Hour? Day?
My netflix movies come overnight. If I get 4, that works out to almost a gig per hour...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
...they expect the technology to be on the market within a decade, right?
Just like all the previous amazing new storage technologies, of which only one or two percent ever turn out to be commerically viable.
Back in the '90s, weren't we meant to be using little holographic cubes by the year 2000? Funny how those never showed up, eh?
I wonder why the didn't make it EXACTLY the same size as a CD/DVD? One would think this would make life so much easier for everyone. I'd settle for ~900GB on a disc, if it meant it would fit in all the existing technology/drives/spinners/changers that are already out there...
Otherwise, this is just another "LASERDISC" with better technology that just won't catch on...
Check out the best P2P sharing website: MEDIACHEST.COM
Optware is using a polymer developed by Aprilis.
You can find more technical details here: Technical Publications
The founder of Optware used to work at Sony, and other technical guys working for them were involved with Blu-Ray. I guess they got tired of working by the hour. Heh. Finally, here's an EETime Article that goes into more detail about the Optware product.
Personally, I just want to know when I can buy a burner.
"Guess this means I'll have to buy the white album again..."
------
"And may your days be long upon the earth."
I've already heard plenty of complaints about a scratch destroying more info on a DVD than a CD due to density. How much would an errant fingernail wipe out on something this dense? I can appreciate the cool factor of cramming so much data on a single disc, but if I have to handle it like a Fabrege (sp?) egg, what's the point?
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
Now I can carry Emacs around with me....uncompressed!
...but you can call me when these things are an actual PRODUCT. Many companies have been claiming massive data storage abilities, some in the range of hundreds of terrabytes! Yet not one has provided a realistic product. Problems include:
- Too costly to manufacture at a profit
- Holographics are too susceptible to damage from scratches or normal wear
- Lasers are difficult to keep calibrated
- whole bunch of stuff I'm not aware of
I really would love to see a format that could play hundreds of hours of uncompressed HDTV video. Despite all the press releases, the reality is that it's just not here yet.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
A 1 gigabyte transfer speed! That is so fast! I could store this new disk in my new 12-minute wide closet.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I just measured one. 12 cm.
ObSheesh: Sheesh!
--- Ban humanity.
I love the technology, but you got to make the media more durable. I hate today's DVDs/CDs that scratch from the slightest mishandling. Those of use with kids (not intended for parents with 30+yrs still living with them, I mean young childen) know the horror I seeing your 2 yr old running around with you prized XXX DVD screaming "I want watch Blues Clues, plez)
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Sony has announced a new Holographic+ format that is identical in every way except that it is totally incompatible, requiring onerous license fees.
Sony executives reached for comment would only say "Have you seen my new house? It's made of MONEY!".
No, its one gigabyte per library of congress
If you blog it...
Does that mean I have to buy Star Wars again?
They should just skip Blu-ray and release this one. It may take a little longer to get into production, but why would peope buy Blu-ray drives if this one won't be far behind?
Now in Super High Definition Video:
"... help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're our only hope..."
"Could you just put the internet on a disk for me so I can bring it home"
I swear I used to get this question......
Well with that much space you could cache a good part of it huh.
I couldn't fail to disagree with you any less.
Here's a tutorial on Holographic storage: http://www.inphase-technologies.com/technology/
I remember back a long time ago on Reading Rainbow Levar(sp?) Burton visiting a research lab and them showing him a working model of holographic memory. I'm not sure which episode it was but I remember them saying we would have holographic memory "by the end of the decade" Damn vapor... (and no I'm not mixing this up with star trek)
This is not a sig
Don't need no trucks no more.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
since when are there 2.4 cm to an inch?
try 5.0in x 2.54 cm/in = 12.7cm
NBC - The complete 1st season
LOTR - Super extendend limited edition trilogy (1 disc set)
Johnny Carson - The complete tonight show with audio commentary
Google Cache Magazine - DVD-ROM
And all of my 100's of DVD's being re-released in Super High Definition uncompressed format.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
I don't think it'll take us 200 more years before we see this kind of storage.s olinearChips.htm s olinearChips.htm
http://littrell.doroch.nl/data/engineering/tech/I
We already have commercial holographic storage now. The disparity in the technological predictions of STtng is miles wide, they were so conservative when it comes to computer technology.
http://littrell.doroch.nl/data/engineering/tech/I
How long before we stop using discs all together ? Anyone care to guess ? 5 years ? 10 years ?
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
That'll sure come in handy as soon as I set up my home IMAX theatre.
[Insert pithy quote here]
What movie did they play back, hmmm? How did that movie get transferred to the holographic disc? Did they rip it from a DVD? Did they pay all of the required fees for showing it to a room full of people? I see lawsuits forthcoming.
RTFA: They're only doing this to make a buck.
Hang on a minute, isn't that the only reason any company develops any product?
...on the consumer end.
Given the proven nature of tape-based backup (and the anecdotal/proven(?) volatility of optical-disc backup), I figure the enterprise market won't touch these w/ a 10-foot pole - at least not until it's been on the market for many years.
However, the low-end/consumer-level backup market is mostly using CDs and DVDs these days (due to the cost associated w/ tapes/drives). I see that market segment moving to this more or less instantly, while growing at a VERY rapid pace (similarly to what happened with Zip disks/drives about a decade ago).
(And yes, I am assuming that this won't hit the market for a few years - however, given that the biggest standard drives are about 250GB now - and uncommon - it seems unlikely that drives will commonly be much larger than 2 TB 4 or 5 years out, such that HVD would be an inconvenient backup solution (compare the inconvenience of backing up a 40GB drive -> 10 DVDs, vs. a 4 TVB drive -> 4 HVDs).
The above presumes that they can get the tech out there for a market appropriate price - while the article doesn't shed much light on pricing, I can't imagine that new HVD media would cost too much (prob. a similar prive curve to DVD). However, the price-friendliness of the servo-technology they describe is pretty much an unproven quantiy, so who know how much the players/burners will go for...
Whether the media companies follow-suit and use the media to distribute movies (i.e. create compatible players), I have no idea. However, people will lilely be backing those movies up on these HVDs, even if only to re-burn to MPAA-approved-media-of-the-week later, as I don't see digital distribution of (uncompressed, un-DRM-encumbered) digital HD coming down the pike anytime soon.
Well, the RIAA and MPAA will probably cripple blu-ray, and then stop producing DVD's, forcing a switch.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
And in 2002 we were supposed be getting damn close to have Flourscent Multilayered Discs. This was 1TB as well and they had fully functional prototypes. *sniff* *sniff* http://www.zzz.com.ru/index.php?area=articles&acti on=show_article&article_id=135&session_id= 0
...and you've eaten your pen. simply stunning.
Present drives won't read these new discs, but will the new discs require a carrying or storage device that has different dimensions than a common CD/DVD jewel case? If so, that sounds like a pain to deal with to me.
Digital Citizen
http://www.physorg.com/preview785.html
Did you know that you would have to take 1,000,000 pictures a day to fill up a 100 terabyte disk in one lifetime?
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
As always: trry google. 5 inch = 12.7 centimeters. But I just measured one and a cd is actuallually 12 centimeters = 4.72440945 inch (at least according to the almighty google). As the compact disc is licensed by philips, 12 cm would be a logical size (more logical then 5 inch anyway)
When will the corps learn that customers don't want to be treated as mere cash cows?
When it stops being lucrative.
isn't [conscienceless greed] the only reason any company develops any product?
Nope, never heard of social responsibility, never heard of ethical business practices, never heard of economic justice, fairness, honesty, social justice...
Well, I'll make a wild guess here and suppose that you just might be... American?
Sorry bub, us engineers are taking over. And rounding off? Its what we DO. Next time, I'll use "~="
Sound good?
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
You are wrong.
It used to be
1 inch = 2.5004 cm or something, but they changed it to
1 inch = 2.54 cm
The meter used to be defined in terms of the Earth's diameter, but they changed that so it is the distance light travels in a somethingth of a second. A second is defined in terms of the decay of ceasium.
The only unit that is arbitrary is The One True Kilogram which resides in France.
As far as I know.
The MPAA has sued Optware Corp. under the DMCA for manufacturing a device that will be used for storing movies and for copyright violations by making an unauthorized copy onto the disc.
The MPAA's Jack Valenti has commented that the Studios are going after the full $150,000/violation, and since it's equivilent to 85,104 Double-Layered DVD burners, they are going after $12,765,600,000.
Holographic storage is pretty cool, but pretty tricky.
There's already several technologies close to coming out for 2D storage on to a compact disk sized product. These have a current density of like 1 gb/cm^2 I think and transfer speeds in the hundreds of mb/s to gigabytes. That's what this article is about. A few companies are already looking at it and they're trying to reformulate to support rewritable media better.
The transfer speed is awesome because unlike a CD where data is read off bit by bit, data is transferred to and read from the holographic disks in 1024x1024 squares (1 megabit). The size of the spatial light modulator is 1024x1024 cells. So one single read action pulls off a megabit of data. That's hot shit IMO.
The one that gets me really interested is 3d volumetric storage which would be like storing data in a crystal. They talk about densities of a terrabyte per cubic cm, with transfer rates of a terrabyte per second. This I want to see. Unfortunately I forget the material they're using (I did a presentation on it a while ago) but once you "read" from it the light rearranges the structure and data is lost. So right now they're one time write and one time read devices. Not do good for a hard drive.
Presently here, but not there.
Been that way since early 1983.
Chip H.
Since 1979.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc
Liquid measure is an unusual thing in the States, we're sort of schizophrenic about it. Milk, paint, gasoline and blood are all measured in "English" -- gallons, pints, quarts, ounces and the like. Soda pop, cooking oil and liquor are generally measured in metric. I say generally, because it's not so easy. Soda comes in 12oz, 16 oz, 1 litre, 32 oz (which is a bit less than a liter), 2 liter and 3 liter containers. Beer comes in 12 and 16oz bottles but hard liquor generally comes in 750 ml, 1 liter, 1.5 liter bottles.
I believe the schizophrenia stems from a desire for package uniformity in beverages that are also marketted overseas. But it does create wierd situations like going out for a gallon of milk and 2 liters of coke, or drinking 2 ounces of whiskey from a 750 ml bottle.
Incidentally, how many mililiters are there in a swig? Or, let's say, a metric shotglass? Do you get more liquor from a 2 oz shot or the metric equivalent -- and does the variance explain US policy with reference to the rest of the world?
Hey freaks: now you're ju
in the UK, a public bar can offer spirits in EITHER 25ml or 35ml (1/4gill) measures. They have to apply for their licence to do so, and somewhere prominent in the bar there will be a plaque advising the patrons of which of those volumes a "standard measure" is.
:D Thank god for scottish licensing laws! :D
And to make it worse, if you are in england/wales, you generally have to drink it up before 11pm as thats when the bars close. In Scotland however, its a WHOLE different matter
That's nothing: I calculated that a freight train, going 100 Km/hour, having boxcars stuffed with 200G harddrives, delivers about 1400 TB/sec. Typical ping time: around 2 weeks.
Great another spinning disk. I wish we could move away from things with motors - fans, spinning disks etc If it is cool holographics why not leave it stationary and move the laser
"gigabyte transfer speed"?!?! Ok then, my car has a 155 mile top speed. My printer prints 15 pages black and white, 12 pages color. My resting heart rate is about 80 beats. My cars gas economy is 18 miles. There, all done.
Given a 1 terabyte disk, how hi-def could the video be? Let do the math. I'm going to assume base-1000 marketing measurements where "1 terabyte" is actually exactly 1 trillion bytes.
;)
Assuming a 2 hour movie at 24 frames per second...
2*60*60*24 = 172,800 frames
1 terabyte / 172,800 frames = 5,787,037 bytes per frame
If we stick to uncompressed but low dynamic range pixels then we need 3 bytes per pixel...
5,787,037 / 3 = 1,929,012 pixels per frame
That's actually slightly less than the 2,073,600 pixels in a 1080p (1920x1080 progressive scan) highest-end HDTV image.
Of course, WMV9PRO compression supposedly delivers something like 2 hours of 1080p on a standard DVD. If we accept compression, the math becomes much easier. Given that 1 terabyte is roughly 200 DVDs you can do:
1) 400 hours of 1920x1080 video
2) 2 hours of 26,880x15,120 video
3) any balance between 1) and 2)
Personally, I'd like to see some of that extra space go to delivering 72 frame per second, 16 bit per channel video. That 6x multiplier would still give us approximately 66 hours of 1080p video even if the compression only scaled linearly.
Let me know when it hits the shelves.