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."

Comments

Okay, maybe Mark Cuban was right

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a big file format, and it will take a while to download.

Re:Okay, maybe Mark Cuban was right

[bircho]

A DVD has 4.7Gb right? But people trade quality for size, and rip it to 700Mb files. How about Telesync?

There's FLAC, but a lot of people just use 128kbps Mp3.

Big file format IS NOT a solution to piracy.

Re:Okay, maybe Mark Cuban was right

[dasmegabyte]

Shit man, you ever try carrying a 2 liter bottle around NYC? You wind up looking like this guy ! It's worth paying an extra $.11 and getting half as much to not look like an idiot. If it weren't, we'd all buy our clothes at Wal-Mart. Value is not simply a matter of material per dollar...there's the quality of the material and its applicability to your needs that must be considered.

Heck, most of the time generalizing something -- adding more material and/or features to it -- DECREASES its overall value. You hope to make it up in volume, but it's entirely possible that the generalization process will kill your product. If you've got X hours to spend on the creation of set of features, and you increase the size of the set, you decrease the time per feature. If a person only cares about three of the features -- and somebody spent their X hours on only those features -- your product will probably be inferior for their needs. Or soda in a machine -- $1.25 for 16 oz of Coke seems like a really big rip off until it's 2am and you're in the middle of nowhere, thirsty as hell.

Back to DVDs: the goal of the motion picture industry should be concentrating on what people WANT from a movie. It seems -- based completely unscientifically on what my friends tell me when THEY get new DVDS -- that people want high quality pictures with accurate multichannel sound, tons of interesting content (e.g. deleted scenes and backstage videos of the stars goofing off), attractive packaging (I know four guys who bought the Two Towers Ultimate set just because it came with a Gollum bookend) and early release, while the movie's still in the back of your mind. So-called copy protection isn't selling DVDs, isn't stopping illegal copies and isn't making it easier to pursue damages from infringement, so why bother?

Finally, I will sell the (iI)nternet on Disks

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:One gigabyte?

[56uSquareWave]

No just one gig in total, once you have got that one gig you are stuck, so choose very very carefully!

Re:One gigabyte?

[Laivincolmo]

The article states 1GB per second...

More details

[Defiler]

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.

White Album

[jeffy210]

"Guess this means I'll have to buy the white album again..."

Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I can carry Emacs around with me....uncompressed!

Not to put a dampner on things...

[AKAImBatman]

...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.

so fast!

[Lord Ender]

A 1 gigabyte transfer speed! That is so fast! I could store this new disk in my new 12-minute wide closet.

Re:so fast!

[pete-classic]

How do you know it's light minutes? Could be arc minutes. So now we just need to know how far he is from the closet.

-Peter

In other news

[endeitzslash]

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!".

Special Edition

[mitchellandrews]

Does that mean I have to buy Star Wars again?

I'm looking forward to the following shows....

[DeadBugs]

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.

Re:One gigabyte?

[AKAImBatman]

It's pretty safe to assume they mean per second. A CD drive has a baseline speed of 150 kb/s. That means that a 48 speed drive has a transfer rate of 7,200 kb/s. Now if we increase the data density to 1 terrabyte, we find that we are now capable of reading 11 gigabytes at the same RPM. Given the greater complexity of this technology, they've probably reduced the RPMs to something more along the lines of an 8 speed drive. This would reduce the data transfer rate, but impose fewer stresses on the media.

Re:One gigabyte?

[bugnuts]

My netflix movies come overnight. If I get 4, that works out to almost a gig per hour...

As the saying goes, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck loaded with tapes hurtling down the highway."

Re:Don't tell me...

[kfg]

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

Re:What about durability?

[baudilus]

You're not talking about durability - you're talking about redundancy.

You're not talking about durability - you're talking about redundancy.

You're not talking about durability - you're talking about redundancy.

You're not talking about durability - you're talking about redundancy.

Re:This format is worthless. Pure profit motive.

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

When will the corps learn that customers don't want to be treated as mere cash cows?

When it stops being lucrative.

Re:2 liters in NYC?

[dasmegabyte]

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?