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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...
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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...
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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..."
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"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.
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A 1 gigabyte transfer speed! That is so fast! I could store this new disk in my new 12-minute wide closet.
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I just measured one. 12 cm.
ObSheesh: Sheesh!
--- Ban humanity.
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!".
Does that mean I have to buy Star Wars again?
Here's a tutorial on Holographic storage: http://www.inphase-technologies.com/technology/
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?
You mean you never got yours? That'll teach you to not leave a forwarding address...
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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.
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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 ?
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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.
We do have it, did you not RTFA?
This is an actual physically existing thing, not some theory and buzzwords written in a proposal.
The technology exists. It just isn't sitting on the shelves at Office Depot yet, but it exists and works. And if you had deep enough pockets, I'm sure you could acquire one.
It's not vapor. It's just not ready to compete with, say, an array of HDDs or big-ass tapes in terms of price yet.
This one is big, though. They have a way to write on "normal" media, that is, preformatted optical discs very much like DVD-Rs. So producing the media won't be a problem. The writing technique they came up with sound's like it requires much less engineering than other holographic processes.
My bucks are on this being the first "holo" tech to market. Probably won't beat BluRay or HD-DVD, but will likely be the tech that makes both of those obsolete.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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.
Yeah, I mean really. I got mine used off ebay already. They didn't do a good job of cleaning it before offering it for sale though. I loaded it up and autoplay ran some movie of some chick with furry ear muffs saying "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope."
Weird.
KFG
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.
That, sir, is a far graver crime.
That's because the Decepticons took them all back to cybertron. Duh!
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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.
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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.
When will the corps learn that customers don't want to be treated as mere cash cows?
When it stops being lucrative.
Actually the only responsibility a company has, other than obeying the law, is to generate profit for its shareholders.
If it does something out of the goodness of its heart that costs its ahreholders money, then its been negligent.
Now ethical trading can be a way to make money as a unique selling point, but not purely because it's nice.
I'm not saying this is a *good* thing, but it is, unfortunately, the truth.
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.
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
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.