Slashdot Mirror
GE Developing 1TB Hologram Disc Readable By a Modified Blu-ray Drive
Globally Mobile writes "The Register has this article concerning GE's announcement that it has been developing a 1 terabyte DVD-size disk that can be read by a modified Blu-ray player. Peter Lorraine, GE's lab manager, talking at an Emerging Tech conference last week, said that license announcements could be expected soon. He also mentioned the notion of disks having the capacity of 100 Blu-ray disks, implying a 2.5TB or even 5TB capacity, gained by increasing the number of layers used for recording. The discs will be used for high-end commercial niches initially and then migrate to consumer markets in 2012-2015. Also here is a video of the technology explained. Wish we could see this sooner! Reminds me of the technology that Bowie's character came up with in The Man Who Fell to Earth."
Great, I haven't still even got a normal bluray player. Nor did I get HD-DVD. Seems like I might just skip it and wait for the modified player that supports this.
that by now, DVD-DL would come down in price. Regular DVD-Rs, I can find them for $0.30 or less each but DVD-DLs are still $1.60 each. With Blue-ray and all this advancing technology, the industry is still strangling the consumer for DVD-DLs.
How many MB will be wiped out by a pathetically small scratch on the disk? Remember the promises made of audio CD's?
Take Nobody's Word For It.
I might be able to use it for off-site backup. As long as it can hold data for 3 years, I am good. Hopefully it doesn't cost 5K per disc.
The title is confusing. Are these Tb or TB?
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Reminds me of the technology that Bowie's character came up with in "The Man Who Fell to Earth."
A quick reminder that the movie actually came from a novel, The Man Who Fell To Earth, by Walter Tevis.
(Movie was a moderately faithful adaptation, as such things go-- unlike some SF movies, where little is taken from the book other than the name, and--in the case of Bladerunner--not even that.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
With the plummeting costs of magnetic storage, what is the point of this? I mean, optical storage is practical when you are talking about a few GB, but for multiple TB? I mean, how long would it take to burn one of those suckers, five, maybe six months? Why not just buy a cheap eSATA or USB external drive and stick it in a closet somewhere -- it's not much more expensive, lasts longer, and saves you a ton of productivity.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
How many MB will be wiped out by a pathetically small scratch on the disk? Remember the promises made of audio CD's?
With well-designed error correction, nothing. Enough error correcting data would be distributed all around the disc to recover from localized scratches.
I think it already did... DVD is the victor.
used the subject as a short summary of your post, rather than the informationless beginning of your comment.
This is actually Bluray 1.0. There were experiments being done involving multi layer discs way before bluray. Sony is the one who dictated the 50GB size for the discs for consumers (25GB for data). Bluray discs themselves can hit considerably higher.
Meanwhile, who knows what kind of DRM will be put on this crap as it's supported by all your favorite media dinosaurs.
Can someone find the old slashdot article about petabyte holographic storage? I don't remember how far back it was, but talking about hundreds + layer holographic storage basically.
Wasn't there a company promising this exact same technology about ten years ago? I've found articles from 2005 talking about a holographic disc from InPhase, and I seem to recall hearing about another company working on something similar even earlier than that, though I can't recall the name of it...what I do recall is hearing something along the lines of the company shutting down several years ago.
the White Album.
Best Slashdot Co
Everything I'd heard about holography and one of the most appealing and promising things about it was that it would not require, or at least minimize, moving parts. Why are they now recreating holographic media as Yet Another Spinning Disc device with parts that wear out quickly, go out of alignment, and put the media at risk of damage? A digital storage medium without moving parts could easily provide devices with unprecedented longevity.
I get the connection to make a Blu-Ray backward-compatible medium, but why lock ourselves in to a bad idea (spinning platters) for a medium that's had lackluster adoption*?
* - which I contend is almost entirely the fault of the iron grip the entertainment distribution industry has tried to impose on the digital storage industry With Great Fail.
FTFY
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
No, wait, I think I got this backwards.
Mass produced CDs and DVDs aren't "burned", they are pressed from masters so that the embedded metal foil layer has the correct pattern on it. This allows for very, very high speed production. Is it possible to do the same thing for these holographic discs? If not, this could be a nice backup media but won't replace DVD or Blu-ray.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
Soon I may put all relevant music ever made onto a single disk. Internet filters wont have much effect then.
That still fits on a single CD-R.
'Besides, GE has no link that I'm aware of to the DeLorean Motor Company that I'm aware of.'
Can't see it on the company chart, but I think it fits in somewhere between the Sheinhardt Wig Company ('Not Poisoning Rivers Since 1997') and AHP Chanagi Party Meats of Pyongyang, N. Korea:
http://www.nbc.com/30_Rock/images/placeholder/GE_OrgChart.jpg
http://www.nbc.com/30_Rock/exclusives/30R_GEWigChart.pdf