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Turner Testing Holographic Storage

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the as-the-world-turners dept.

Izmunuti writes "An article in ComputerWorld describes tests by Turner Entertainment of a holographic storage system from InPhase Technologies as a possible replacement for magnetic tape for storing their movies and other programs for playback and broadcast. The article states that each holographic disk holds 300 GBytes." Even more impressive is the cost per terabyte estimated for just a few years down the road.

11 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. A few years down the road... by w.p.richardson · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Mmmmmm... vapor...

    --

    Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!

    1. Re:A few years down the road... by n0d3 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You do realize that inphase actually has working prototypes. Turner is actually TESTING it allready.

      Secondly, E-Ink is real. Sony has made a book like reader device with it. The reason you don't see it everywhere is because the creators (among Philips) doesn't think it's ready (speedwise they are improving still) but more importantly they don't wanna go all out until it has color. Nobody wants black and white screens anymore. Oh and yes, they are quite advanced with that aswell.

      And Duke Nukem forever will arrive ... some day : )

  2. Re:Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Get a better lawyer.

  3. Re:Yay! by Lumpy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How lomg till some corporation vehemently opposes this one?

    the second a home version is released without 60 pounds of restrictions and the owner is evil settings applied to it.

    DVD writing at home started the MPAA whining. Although frinds and myself have been backing up DVD's to DLT for almost 6 years now (lots more space and reliability with cheapness now that DLT-V drives can be had for almost nothing on ebay as well as tapes.)

    they do not scream that DLT is dangerous because 99% of the consumers dont even know what it is let alone have one.

    so it takes me 12 minutes to load a backup and burn to a DVD-RW to watch it or to load it to the transcoder and then push it to dvarchive to view it on the replay tv... who cares.

    it's a mass storage medium it can be used for good or evil uses. I prefer evil uses.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  4. Re:Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope... by squiggleslash · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Moreover, given the patents would have had to be registered a long time ago (in that galaxy far, far, away), they've probably expired by now.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  5. Re:Cost of storage by Keruo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "I don't get it... It's going to burn at 160MB/sec but only read at 27MB/sec?"

    Assuming this isn't vapourware.. perhaps their optics burn all holographic layers at one go, but can only read the layers one by one

    --
    There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
  6. inphase press release by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    This article from the company in the link seems to show different numbers:

    http://www.inphase-tech.com/news/turneronair.html

    Me thinks the other article is badly misquoted.

  7. "cost per terabyte" by Caspian · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wow. That comment really makes you sit back and shake your head in amazement.

    Not so long ago, we were talking about which drives gave the best cost per megabyte.

    Now we're talking about cost per terabyte.

    Simply amazing.

    --
    With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
  8. As soon as... by LTC_Kilgore · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They figure out how to get managed copy on holographic storage, they'll make the transition

  9. Re:To Little To Late by suso · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, they have been talking about holographic storage for almost 20 years now and one would have thought it would have been here 5 years ago with a TB or more of storage, which would have been something. But now they are saying 1.6TB by 2010. Come on. Hard drives in 2010 will probably be 1.6TB or more.

  10. 2010? (was: Re:A few years down the road...) by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Only problem with holographic memory is that sequential erasure will not work. You'd have to feed it a tapeworm to selectively seek out and destroy unwanted data.

    --
    Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?