Holographic Disc to Store One Terabyte of Data

[Spidermate]

Japan-based Optware Corp. has announced it had achieved successfully the world's first recording and play back of digital movies on a Holographic Versatile Discâ„¢ (HVD) with a reflective layer using Optware's revolutionary Collinear Holography.

Recording holographic page data on a rotating transparent disc has been reported before. Such discs, however, are foreign to the conventional optical discs. Lacking the servo information, they do not seem to have a commercial viability. On the contrary Optware has proposed Collinear Holographic recording on a hologram disc the structure of which follows conventional optical disc, i.e. preformatted disc with a reflective layer (disc with servo information).

Holographic recording technology records data on discs in the form of laser interference fringes, enabling existing discs the same size as today's DVDs to store as much as one terabyte of data (200 times the capacity of a single layer DVD), with a transfer speed of one gigabyte per second (40 times the speed of DVD). This approach is rapidly gaining attention as a high-capacity, high-speed data storage technology for the age of broadband.

The Japanese company plans to commercialize the technology in the first quarter of 2006 and use the technology for enterprise applications, offering 200GB Holographic Versatile Discs and reader/writer players that will cost about $2,700.

This may be old to some,but it may be new to others. From what I know,Sony and Optware are behind this project,incase some of you didn't know this already.

 

[clem64]

perhaps for PS4?

 

[AlNom]

is that it?











...Actually, I get more paranoid about storing lots more stuff on a single disc. A single scratch could take out gigabytes of pr0n.

 

[Spaceman-Spiff]

They should resize the disc size the same as DVD, so players/dvdrom drives in the future can play both formats. I won't be bothered if resizing that will cause the cd only holds 800Gigs (still plenty of space).

In a few years when Blu-ray Discs or HD-DVDs are the current standards, we'll need to buy our will-be-old dvd movie collections in HDTV format because DVDs will be obsolete.

Then a few years after that, we'll have to replace our Blu-ray movies with holographic ones (or something even better).

Endless consumerism .

 

[Guden Oden]

In what way is this topic console-related?

 

[sunscar]

They apear to be on a slant, making the holographic disc look larger than the DVD rom, in reality itis not so. The evidence is in the length of the radius of the discs from one side vs the other... proof of a slant.


Later

Iridius Dio

 

[Tsmit42]

enabling existing discs the same size as today's DVDs to store as much as one terabyte of data

The article says they are the same size.

 

[Spidermate]

perhaps for PS4?

I'm thinking so,too,although a quad disc could hold them over for awhile.And yes,the disc are the same size as the previous DVDs.

 

[sunscar]

Funny thing, is I believe I've heard that those discs may be readable via Blu-Ray DVD drive.

May be wrong on that, but if not, could be interresting.


Later

Iridius Dio

 

[aaaaa00]

Funny thing, is I believe I've heard that those discs may be readable via Blu-Ray DVD drive.

May be wrong on that, but if not, could be interresting.

Sure whatever. Minus the fact that the read/write technology is completely and utterly different between that and BRD.

 

[sunscar]

Actually, not completely different, as you've stated. It would be completely different if this were using a dual-beam interference setup to read and write the data. That's one of the reasons why Optware decided to use colinear holography instead.... one beam (actually two beams together) = possibly far greater market appeal and far greater compatibility with older drive tech.

Still it would not alleviate the fact that the two are different standards. Some intermediary would still be required, a firmware update or extra hardware aboard could do the trick.

"Everything starts here"

News sources in Japan stated a few days ago that Optware was using SONY's blue-laser diodes, which doesn't necessarily mean Blu-ray, for the purpose of reading and writing the data to and from their discs.

That may just be a corporate relations move, though it bares repeating that another caveat of using Blu-ray compatible drives is (and this is assuming the BDRoms win the HD-DVD wars) the wide spread distribution they would provide.

The basic mindset there is it's difficult, if not impossible for even a large company to launch a completely new, world-wide format change, let-alone a small company. So what does the smaller company do? They piggyback their tech with something else pre-existant.

Admittedly, there are already Blu-Ray readers/writers on the market, which would pose a problem. How do you get those old machines to play a new colinear holographic disc? Do you get them to do so at all? If the answer is no, then the statement is that, no, not all Blu-Ray players will play back colinear holographic discs. The bigger question is will any of them do so.

Nobody's talking on that, but like I said, it's only a possibility. Still, in my own views I don't see it happening.


Later

 

[PC-Engine]

HVD may be the next big jump after BR and HD-DVD and I'm sure you can Jimmy Rig both BR and HD-DVD drives to playback HVD if you add enough parts and going by the "anything is possible" logic...

 

[sunscar]

That's kind of my thoughts too. It (HD-DVD or a Blu-Ray player) may not even need a complete rework to "just" read the HVDs. It's not like they write a different language, they just need glasses. Some clever (if a bit precise and extreme) BIOS reworking could do the trick.

Later

 

[MfA]

I dont think a blueray recorder usually contains an imaging element and ccd for recording/playback.

 

[BigGamer X]

"with a transfer speed of one gigabyte per second (40 times the speed of DVD). "

That's what has me excited!!

 

[aaaaa00]

Actually, not completely different, as you've stated. It would be completely different if this were using a dual-beam interference setup to read and write the data.

It's a completely different technology.

Blu-Ray drives don't contain a DMD array, nor do they contain a CCD array.

Having the same laser diode is the least of the issues involved -- there is no way a Blu Ray drive of any kind that follows the current Blu Ray spec will ever be able to read or write such a disc because they simply don't have the hardware necessary.

 

[sunscar]

Hence my addition that a hardware addition would possibly be required.



By the way, CCD array? Are you talking about colinear holographic tech or something different? It isn't the same as dual-beam interference holography, for read or write.

 

[aaaaa00]

Hence my addition that a hardware addition would possibly be required.

Additional hardware that will certainly cost more than the blue laser diode and probably all the other optical hardware put together, maybe?

By the way, CCD array? Are you talking about colinear holographic tech or something different? It isn't the same as dual-beam interference holography, for read or write.

Maybe it would be a good idea to examine the technology description and the diagrams on optware's own website.

If the explanation on the optware web site is correct, colinear holographic recording arranges bits of data into pages, then records whole pages to the disc as multiple holographs. These holographs are stored in tracks on the disc, and the head of the disk is positioned with an optical servo, using a different light frequency and a special layer on the disc so it doesn't interfere with the holograms.

Writing is done using a digital micromirror device (DMD). A DMD is a tiny 2D array of mirrors which are electrostatically controlled and can be turned on or off. These are not cheap -- they're the same things that drive HDTVs and digital projectors that cost thousands of dollars.

You have a single source laser that is split into a reference beam and an information beam. You reflect the information beam off the DMD device, then interfere it with the reference beam, then expose the media to this resultant beam. The key innovation is not that there aren't two beams (there are) but that the two beams are colinear, instead of at different angles. Regardless, the end result is a hologram image of the 2D data page recorded onto the media.

To recover the data, you shine the reference beam onto the surface of the media, which reconstructs the original image from the stored interference pattern. You then capture the image using a 2D image sensor (which is also relatively expensive -- it's basically the key component of a digital camera).

So frankly, I don't see any way to make a BRD drive read one of these without adding massive amounts of hardware, so much so, that you wouldn't really call it a "BRD drive" anymore but an "HVD drive with BRD backwards compatibility".

[ Reference: http://www.optware.co.jp/english/tech.htm ]

 

[sunscar]

Whoa, okay, I see what's up now. This is a completely diferent tech than what I've seen by far then. This is working with full pages at a time, read and write? It's a bit hard to describe the colinear holographic read write method I was pitched about a year ago, but this is not the same idea by a long shot. This would certainly require a completely different hardware than Blu-ray.

I understand where the DMD and CCD array came from now. The DMDs by the way are used in DLP projectors and TVs, also some theatres have been lucky enough to get to use them (Star Wars Episode II was shown on DLP projectors in a few places). Only gripe with them is the black/white levels are off a little bit. CCDs (charge couple devices) are basically a complicated photo-electric array, they're in every digital camera and usually color blind, oddly enough, though it wouldn't matter for this purpose.

The version of this that was sent my way last year was a similar concept, but was designed entirely with legacy drive tech in mind, atleast for reading the discs. The idea was to use two beams in the same X,Y axis to create distortions in the polymer of the disc (for writing), similar to this, but used only one beam to pick up the data. It was simpler, but it would've limited the data read/write throughput of the medium drastically too, but that's the trade-off for compatibility.


Deffinately sorry about that, my bad there.


Later

Iridius Dio

 

[PC-Engine]

Maybe the tech you're talking about is the one from InPhase Technologies?