InPhase Holodisks showing up HD-DVD and BR

[rabidrabbit]

We should wait until we get rid of discs completely, I want a holographic cube storage medium.
DVD's will do fine until then.

Discs are much easier to sore than cubes. Think about it.

I've thought about that, if they were cubes the size of a sugarcube or two, there would be no problem.
Or balls.

 

[Roger Kohli]

Look what the ipod has done to the CD. plastic discs are history. People are just going to download their stuff from the store.

In fact if I were a manufacturer of discs, I'd be worried about future revenue.

 

[rabidrabbit]

PS3 should be a 12Terabytes holographic cube.

I've got about 50 PS2 games, the same amount of DVD's and hundreds of cd's.
That's already approximately 800GB of media.
A 250GB HD inside a next gen console would be too small if it had no disc drive.

 

[PC-Engine]

Look what the ipod has done to the CD. plastic discs are history. People are just going to download their stuff from the store.

In fact if I were a manufacturer of discs, I'd be worried about future revenue.

With discs you can just burn them and give them away to friends and relatives. You can't do that with HDDs.

 

[rabidrabbit]

THAT'S ILLEGAL!!!
And it's not even supported unless you mod your console. Next gens it will be even more difficult.

 

[London Geezer]

You guys are crazy. Removable storage will alwys be needed, at least until the vast majority of the population will have fast enough internet connection, and obviously once it's "easy" to share files. Today, it's not exactly "easy" to share huge files.

Discs are going to be around for ages still, no one will worry about "future revenues" for a long time, like some guy up here said.

Rabid, try to store those 50 games as sugarcubes or balls instead of a stack of CDs. Then let me know how fun your "lotter-style-find-a-game" is... 8)

 

[Roger Kohli]

You guys are crazy. Removable storage will alwys be needed, at least until the vast majority of the population will have fast enough internet connection, and obviously once it's "easy" to share files. Today, it's not exactly "easy" to share huge files.

I don't have an ipod but I'd assume its easy to transfer files around. Your average man in the street seems to have no problem. Removeable storage does not have to mean disc. 18M broadband (ADSL2?) doesn't look like being too far away either.

 

[London Geezer]

You guys are crazy. Removable storage will alwys be needed, at least until the vast majority of the population will have fast enough internet connection, and obviously once it's "easy" to share files. Today, it's not exactly "easy" to share huge files.

I don't have an ipod but I'd assume its easy to transfer files around. Your average man in the street seems to have no problem. Removeable storage does not have to mean disc. 18M broadband (ADSL2?) doesn't look like being too far away either.

Yes, i will get 25Mb ADSL2 by the end of the year (apparently), but that's not indicative of how many people will have access to it.
250M broadband users sounds good and all, but it's not enough, and most of those have <1Mb connections, which will liekly stay that way for a while. I just don't see discs going away for a looong time. DVDs will be around for years, next gen formats even longer...

 

[darkblu]

300GB and WORM (Write Once, Read Many). The 20Mb transfer rate on the 200GB model seems a little slow though.

extreme tech's article says 20 mbytes of transfer.

 

[London Geezer]

300GB and WORM (Write Once, Read Many). The 20Mb transfer rate on the 200GB model seems a little slow though.

extreme tech's article says 20 mbytes of transfer.

Better, but still very low... Assuming a constant 20MB transfer, it would take more than 4 hours to read a whole 300MB disc. If 20MB is 1X, i guess things will improve but still...

 

[Guden Oden]

Sure Blu-ray has longer legs than HD DVD, but who cares when holographic technology is right around the corner?

I think you got this the wrong way around. Having a huge disc SUPPOSEDLY to launch in 2006 (though I doubt it actually will), will just work to push HD-DVD further into obsolescence compared to bluray. If you want to buy something large NOW, why would you settle for the most stop-gap-ish of solutions that offers the smallest capacity of them all? Makes no sense.

 

[London Geezer]

Oh no not again...

 

[wco81]

London is getting 25 Mb connections this year? That from BT? ISPs over here advertise 4 Mb but when you can't get it, they tell you it's not guaranteed speed.

As for holographic storage, if the hardware and software could be delivered for consumer prices in the next couple of years, I'm sure there would be a lot of investment in the technology.

But you don't see any of the major companies doing it. We've had blue-laser prototypes at CES for like 5 years and it still hasn't come widely to the market yet.

If the technology was economically viable and as competitive as some of these startups are claiming, you would expect a lot of venture capital going to this area.

People question the manufacturing costs of Blu-Ray discs because the physical format is such a departure from DVDs. Replication plants will have to retool, make big investments to build BR capacity.

So what is the infrastructure investment required for holographic media, not to mention holographic hardware? At least there is an existing infrastructure for holographic hardware and software.

 

[London Geezer]

London is getting 25 Mb connections this year? That from BT? ISPs over here advertise 4 Mb but when you can't get it, they tell you it's not guaranteed speed.

No it's not BT, i'm with www.bulldogbroadband.com

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

Better, but still very low... Assuming a constant 20MB transfer, it would take more than 4 hours to read a whole 300MB disc. If 20MB is 1X, i guess things will improve but still...

By what math does 300/20 > 14400? I'm assuming you meant 300 GB disc... Either way, what does that say about 400 GB hard drives that have 35 MB/sec transfer rates? In practice, for this to work as a consumer WORM medium, you'd have to make it natively multisession.

One of the things with holographic media is that if you develop a material that holds up better data fidelity over multiphase writes, then you gain better density and throughput for free. Of course, your throughput rate is going to grow at the same rate as your capacity, so it doesn't really save you any time.

Still, it would make at least a little bit of sense for a while at the hands of software publishers and content publishers who can setup overnight build processes that burn to disc, so they can afford 4 hour write cycles.

 

[Teasy]

Oh that kind of tech has been around since CD days actually - DAT tapes have typically offered ~10x more space then whatever the dominant optical format was at the time.

DAT tapes hold nearly 50GB? (10 times a normal DVD). Serious question, I have no idea about DAT tapes.

 

[Lazy8s]

If a new technology is going to require a major overhaul of the existing industry infrastructure for DVDs, its advantage should be large enough to effect new types of usefulness over what an incremental evolution of DVD technology could do. Holographic storage technologies afford this, at least.

 

[London Geezer]

Better, but still very low... Assuming a constant 20MB transfer, it would take more than 4 hours to read a whole 300MB disc. If 20MB is 1X, i guess things will improve but still...

By what math does 300/20 > 14400? I'm assuming you meant 300 GB disc... Either way, what does that say about 400 GB hard drives that have 35 MB/sec transfer rates? In practice, for this to work as a consumer WORM medium, you'd have to make it natively multisession.

One of the things with holographic media is that if you develop a material that holds up better data fidelity over multiphase writes, then you gain better density and throughput for free. Of course, your throughput rate is going to grow at the same rate as your capacity, so it doesn't really save you any time.

Still, it would make at least a little bit of sense for a while at the hands of software publishers and content publishers who can setup overnight build processes that burn to disc, so they can afford 4 hour write cycles.

obviously i meant GB The 300GB disc was mentioned earlier.

 

[Ty]

If a new technology is going to require a major overhaul of the existing industry infrastructure for DVDs, its advantage should be large enough to effect new types of usefulness over what an incremental evolution of DVD technology could do. Holographic storage technologies afford this, at least.

Sure, in a perfect world. Unfortunately no company is going to sell you a piece of hardware that doesn't have planned obsolescence in it - otherwise they'd lose you as a customer once you bought it.

 

[London Geezer]

If a new technology is going to require a major overhaul of the existing industry infrastructure for DVDs, its advantage should be large enough to effect new types of usefulness over what an incremental evolution of DVD technology could do. Holographic storage technologies afford this, at least.

Sure, in a perfect world. Unfortunately no company is going to sell you a piece of hardware that doesn't have planned obsolescence in it - otherwise they'd lose you as a customer once you bought it.

Well, technology always advances, although companies know that whatever they release to consumers is already somewhat "old tech", it's not like they live with and evil grin on their faces, happy to exploit us. Well, not all of them at least... It's the way things work, there is always something new being developed.