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6 Firms Form Holographic Versatile Disc Alliance

gardolas writes "'Fuji Photo and CMC Magnentics are two of six companies, who have formed a consortium to promote HVD technology, which they say can be used to put 1TB of data onto just one disc. The consortium say that a HVD disc could hold about 200 standard DVD's, and transfer data at speeds 40 times that of DVD, about 1GB per second.' HVD is being seen as a possible successor to Blu-ray and HD-DVD technologies."

10 of 325 comments (clear)

  1. A timeline is emerging? by Staplerh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Wow, from TFA:

    HVD is a possible successor to technologies such as Blu-ray and HD DVD. Single layer Blu-ray discs hold about 25GB of data while dual-layer discs hold 50GB. Ordinary DVD discs, meanwhile, hold about 4.7GB. HVD technology will be pitched at corporations and the entertainment market, the HVD Alliance said.

    Hmm, there's a format war going on with the Blu-ray and HD DVD, and they're already plotting the successor. Of course, they don't give a date in the article or anything firm at all, so perhaps it is a bit of a pipe dream. I must admit, I liked this quip from the article:

    If history is an indication, consumers will fill the disc up.

    Considering when I got my first computer, and the salesperson chuckled and said 'there was no way in hell I'd ever fill up a 40 megabyte hard drive', it's nice to see that people finally understand the capacity of users to fill up every nook and cranny of a storage medium!

    --
    "There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
    - Bob Dylan
  2. Hard disk bottleneck by macklin01 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Too bad that a hard disk would be nowhere near to keeping up with a 1GB/s transfer rate. Heck, IIRC (and please correct me if I don't!) RAM would have trouble keeping up with that ... -- Paul

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    OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
  3. But.... by CastrTroy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But will they put some kind of protection around the disk similar to 3.5 Floppies or MiniDiscs? That's my one big beef about CDs. They're so fragile. I'm careful, but one false move can really mess them up. If you can fit so much on a disc, make them smaller, 2 inch diameter? but make them protected.

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  4. Re:Can you say worthless? by rokzy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have TB hard drive for my simulations. if I want to back up my data, you suggest 200 DVDs?

    this is progress. if you're so lacking in imagination that you can't think of a use for this then just remember that you are not psychic and don't know what secondary discoveries pursuing this technology will bring. when the electron was discovered how many people do you think knew how it would change our lives?

  5. Less hole by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Interesting

    While they're increasing the density in a new format, how about making the spindle hole and clampable hub a lot smaller? Throw this density at a 1" disc, and a CD/DVD hole/hub will eat most of the usable area. Let's have a 1mm hole/hub, and use the whole medium. And while we're at it, let's finally get doublesided drives (without flipping discs): they've been promising doublesided media since DS/DD 5.25" floppies, and we're still waiting.

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    make install -not war

  6. magnetoptical by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How about a multilayer, "multiphysics" disc? Lay down several optical layers readable by focusable laser. Beneath them, a magnetic layer readable by HD heads. We might be able to get over 50% more capacity, without needing greater areal density. With doublesided discs, and pinhole spindle hubs, we might be looking at 2" discs with 1TB capacity.

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    make install -not war

  7. Add a flexible layer of hw gen. redundancy data. by eddy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It'd be cool if they could put in a function in the hardware that would calculate and fill out the media with [standardized] redundancy data. You'd want it do be done in hardware to be fast, compatible and not generate unneccesary bus traffic.

    Basically, the burn software would feature a '[X] Fill out with redundancy data and finalize disc'-option box together with the '[X] Finalize disc' one.

    I've sometimes done this by hand, but it takes forever to calculate the data, and you don't get it properly distributed over the disc, etc, etc. I think it'd be better done in hardware.

    Guess there's no hope though, it'd up the cost a dollar, and we all know that's just impossible to bear. <sigh>

    --
    Belief is the currency of delusion.
  8. Re:Souvenirs by AlfredoLambda · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sorry to burst your bubble, but I've read such a story in some 80's sci-fi comic book. It was written by Alan Moore in 2000A.D., IRC. But it was'nt a CD, it was a planet with a strange continuous groove over it's surface, where some kind of creatures lived. Yup, you played the planet with a giant laser beam and it made sounds while the animal life in the planet died. Talk about DRM :-D

  9. Re:time for lossless video compression by PeterBrett · · Score: 2, Interesting

    32 GB = ~ 1 minute HDTV

    I went for a job interview at Snell & Wilcox (Google it) and they showed me a huge rack. They said, "This is a realtime HDTV compositing platform." I said, "That's a bit big, isn't it?" They said, "Yes, but it needs to be this big. It has 128 GB of RAM in it, because content producers need to mix in segments up to four minutes."

    At which point my jaw hit the floor.

  10. Re:200 dvds ? by SuperIceBoy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No.

    3 billion pairs x 2 bits = 6 billion bits

    6 billion bits / 8 = 750,000,000 bytes

    750,000,000 bytes / 1024 = 732421.875 kb

    732421.875 kb / 1024 = 715.2557373046875 mb

    So it would be 1 700mb cd and a little bit on a second cd. And thats without running any sort of compression on the data.