Holographic Disc to Store One Terabyte of Data

[coldstorm]

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 is currently the cost of some blu-ray players. So cost should be inline with blu-ray at least with more capacity + speed. Media for the holographic cards is suppose to cost $1 for 30GB. hopefully that relates to low cost of HVD discs but cost of them is unknow at this point.

 

[mckmas8808]

This is currently the cost of some blu-ray players. So cost should be inline with blu-ray at least with more capacity + speed. Media for the holographic cards is suppose to cost $1 for 30GB. hopefully that relates to low cost of HVD discs but cost of them is unknow at this point.

The difference is in 2006 those players will cost $2700 while we will be able to get a Blu-ray player for under $400. And the stand-alone Blu-ray players with more functionality will probably cost about $1000.

Big price difference.

 

[coldstorm]

This is currently the cost of some blu-ray players. So cost should be inline with blu-ray at least with more capacity + speed. Media for the holographic cards is suppose to cost $1 for 30GB. hopefully that relates to low cost of HVD discs but cost of them is unknow at this point.

The difference is in 2006 those players will cost $2700 while we will be able to get a Blu-ray player for under $400. And the stand-alone Blu-ray players with more functionality will probably cost about $1000.

Big price difference.

but the price is inline with 1st gen blu-ray recorders. Your missing the same point you speaking about with blu-ray. you say has more space + more advance than hd dvd . well hvd is more advance + spacious than the both of them. Even in the last stages of blu-ray with 8 layer it will only have 2/3 the space of 1st generation hvd. they have the advantage as in they alone creating the standard and they decide what goes. with blu-ray you have alot more red tape as such blu-ray v2 is yet to be ratified. The way to apply the protective coating still has to be decided. 8)

 

[Shifty Geezer]

For me, a hi-def disc format will do for the next tens year, by which time I expect we'll have streamed video on demand and not have physical stores, which would be the movie studios' dream come true. With pay-per-view only people won't be able to lend copies to their friends.

I just said roughly the same thing in another thread. The interesting thing here is that if this is true, it really stacks the deck against an HD disc format ever being hugely successful (say, DVD successful). How many years did it take DVD to overtake VHS? 4 years? Maybe 5. Since everyone had TVs that could take advantage of DVD, but only a small percentage of the market has HD sets (and in some regions, it's 0%), we can't assume an identical growth. I'm doubtful that an HD format will ever over take DVD before some other delivery mechanism takes root.
.Sis

Videos were around for some 20 years. Tapes for 20 years. CDs have been around for something like 20 years. DVD's are more like 10 and they want to replace it, and people are talking of replacing these new hidef disk with even larger storage (holographic) within years.

It's baloney madness that'll never work. Sure, the media giants want excuses to keep selling us the same material on different formats over and over again, but I'm not gonna bother! How many people already have stacks of tapes piled high unused? And add to that DVDs. And then HDDVDs/BRDs. We know content on demand is coming. I'm gonna wait. I'll buy Hidef discs next gen player tech and that'll see me through. A trigabyte holocube organic storage offering 1 zillion by 1 zillion pixel resolution uncompressed media is gonna look barely indistinguishable on a 32" than 1080p. Until we get something crazy like 3D images and holographic projectors, I see the next optical disk being the end of the line for hard storage. Certainly for me! And at that time the storage (holographic) becomes the worry of the distribution network.

 

[mckmas8808]

but the price is inline with 1st gen blu-ray recorders. Your missing the same point you speaking about with blu-ray. you say has more space + more advance than hd dvd .

So how many years is it going to take it to come down to reasonable prices. Blu-ray players have been in Japan for a while now. And consomer HVD players will only offer 100 gig discs and that will be in 2007.

 

[coldstorm]

but the price is inline with 1st gen blu-ray recorders. Your missing the same point you speaking about with blu-ray. you say has more space + more advance than hd dvd .

So how many years is it going to take it to come down to reasonable prices. Blu-ray players have been in Japan for a while now. And consomer HVD players will only offer 100 gig discs and that will be in 2007.

Yes they been that price for awhile now. But why it that? They couldn't compete with dvd commerically. Even when they release blu-ray players next year the adoption rate is not going to signifigant unless they have exculsive content for it.

 

[mckmas8808]

Yes they been that price for awhile now. But why it that? They couldn't compete with dvd commerically. Even when they release blu-ray players next year the adoption rate is not going to signifigant unless they have exculsive content for it.

Isn't the PS3 going to help the adoption rate? Adoption rate is something that I'm not really worried about. And where is HVD's support? Exculsive content you say. Ok where's HVD's exlusive content?

 

[coldstorm]

:?

i am argueing that the cost of HVD while be in line with current cost of blu-ray player. Next year they will have $400 blu-ray player and when sony launches ps3 at cost below that their partner will not be very happy about that but that is another matter. The burner will still cost alot when HDV is introduced. The HVD burner will out perform the current blu-ray one in both speed and space. Will the blu-ray be cheaper next year. YES. But HVD will have more space for all that HDTV content you wish to record. And seeing next year is World Cup there will be lots of recording to do.
And what i mean by adoption rate is movie blu-ray sales.

 

[Ty]

I'll all for HVD if it can be out on the market near the time that BR/HD-DVD makes it out (I'm sick of just DVD frankly) and gets support from the movie houses.

HVD>BR>HD-DVD

 

[mckmas8808]

I'll all for HVD if it can be out on the market near the time that BR/HD-DVD makes it out (I'm sick of just DVD frankly) and gets support from the movie houses.

HVD>BR>HD-DVD

Yeah technically that's true. But whatever happened to content? What happened to support? Everyone throws Betamax in the face of Sony when it comes to Blu-ray, yet HVD gets no negative talk. What happened to just being technically superior not being the automatic winner.

Betamax was technically better than VHS and look what happened. It looks like Sony has taken a better route with Blu-ray. Where's HVD's support. If they are launching one year later where are all the computer industry back up now. Years ago both HD-DVD and Blu-ray had a long list of support for their media of creation. Where's HVD's support?

You people are breaking all the rules. First price is a issue, then support is a issue, then it's do people really need of that space talk, then it's 'why would people spend extra money on a next-gen format when DVDs are sales great. Now all of a sudden HVD is looking like a clear winner to some people. Man please!! Somebody please tell me what movie studios is supporting HVD please.

 

[coldstorm]

if you wish to go that route why hasn't a single movie been released by the movie companies for those formats as yet. support is one thing content is another. how long have we gone with content ? your arguement is a double standard onto itself. only later this year will HD- dvd content first be release ,we will have to wait for next year to see what blu-ray has to offer. HVD first players are coming off next year. All those companies have support of their format for year but no movies.

HD dvd was decided to be sucessor to dvd by the dvd forum. If sony hadn't decided to go make blu-ray we wouldn't be having a format war.

Price issue is that they are in line with first generation price from blu-ray and hd dvd. blu-ray + hd dvd will be releaseing their read-only models lines later this year and onto the next. those are better made for mass prodution and will be made in greater number and cost alot less than current blu-ray & hd dvd players. So it is line with their orginal price and i will get alot more for my money then. those blu-ray + hd dvd recorders aren't going to take a massive dive price in truth what might happen is that they might be same price when hvd get on market.

 

[Fafalada]

It could knock out both bluray and hd-dvd esp if costs are in line with those techs

It could also become the next magneto-optical Disc - aka, server and other backup storage.
The HD-DVD and BRD offer a notable advancement over DVD in terms of media storage, HVD will not offer anything of the sort over them.
More space without a jump in quality of content will not make a viable new media format - of course there's a possibility BRD and HD-DVD will kill off each other to the point where market will easily accept a new format.

Imo if either BRD or HD-DVD is sucessful as a DVD replacement, HVD won't enter mainstream until cheap recordable PC-drives come out.

 

[jvd]

mckmass . The problem is even if its more exepsnive by the sum of tripple or more the price of bluray . It will still hold many times the data of a single layer bluray disc . Even if 8 layer bluray discs are possible and on the shelves the day this tech hits shelves it will still have a huge advantage over bluray in terms of space and speed.

These discs don't move .They use multi lasers that move to read the data instead . Allowing them to reach very high speeds that bluray and hd-dvd simply wont hit .


Whats silly to me is that now while hd-tv is so small of niche there will be a war with two techs that each have advnatages and disadvantages compared to each other . But are utterly pushed to the way side by hvd which could be ready in 2 years to start coming out .

 

[Ty]

Yeah technically that's true. But whatever happened to content? What happened to support? Everyone throws Betamax in the face of Sony when it comes to Blu-ray, yet HVD gets no negative talk. What happened to just being technically superior not being the automatic winner.

Betamax was technically better than VHS and look what happened. It looks like Sony has taken a better route with Blu-ray. Where's HVD's support. If they are launching one year later where are all the computer industry back up now. Years ago both HD-DVD and Blu-ray had a long list of support for their media of creation. Where's HVD's support?

You people are breaking all the rules. First price is a issue, then support is a issue, then it's do people really need of that space talk, then it's 'why would people spend extra money on a next-gen format when DVDs are sales great. Now all of a sudden HVD is looking like a clear winner to some people. Man please!! Somebody please tell me what movie studios is supporting HVD please.

Oh I absolutely agree with you. MOST of the people talking up HVD are doing so just because BR > HD-DVD and that burns them. Others are simply ignorant of all the work that still needs to be done to turn HVD into a mass market device. Yay, the technology works in the lab. But that's only half of the battle. You still need to get the momentum of all the other players behind you and just having it working in the lab isn't going to do it.

Frankly, if Toshiba wants to kill off BR, they should just kill HD-DVD and say that HVD is the true successor to the DVD. Of course that will never happen because it requires a ton of back tracking and other work.

if you wish to go that route why hasn't a single movie been released by the movie companies for those formats as yet. support is one thing content is another.

Ok, then where is the support? I don't see ANY movie studios throwing their weight behind it. Are there ANY manufacturers saying they'll put out HVD players soon?

how long have we gone with content ? your arguement is a double standard onto itself.

No, his argument is that some anti-BR people are being hypocritical. Some from the anti-BR camp here are saying, "So what if BR is technically superior? Technology isn't everything, content is king". And they're right imo. Now with HVD they are reversing their argument. "HVD is so superior to BR" - never mind that there is no content even in the pipeline for HVD (i.e. no studios afaik have lined up behind it).

HD dvd was decided to be sucessor to dvd by the dvd forum. If sony hadn't decided to go make blu-ray we wouldn't be having a format war.

Do you allow politics to cloud your judgement as a consumer?

BR is superior to HD-DVD, period. The only thing HD-DVD has in its favor for the consumer (you, me, and the rest of us here) is timing.

<snipped last paragraph cuz I agree with the spirit of it>

Hey, if HVD can actually make it out around the time of BR/HD-DVD AND get the support from content publishers, I'm all behind it.

mckmass . The problem is even if its more exepsnive by the sum of tripple or more the price of bluray . It will still hold many times the data of a single layer bluray disc .

IF HVD players come out at 3x the price of a BR / HD-DVD players and the price doesn't ramp down quickly against them, HVD = dead. There will be little adoption and therefore not enough publishers of content behind it.

Even if 8 layer bluray discs are possible and on the shelves the day this tech hits shelves it will still have a huge advantage over bluray in terms of space and speed.

How will the average consumer notice the difference? Let's say there is a BR version of a movie and a HVD version? Both run at 1080p using the best compression methods available. What difference would be there? The difference would be the price of the player (using your example) and no where else. BR offers the best visuals, has quite a bit of content publishers behind it, and seems to be coming out soon.

These discs don't move .They use multi lasers that move to read the data instead . Allowing them to reach very high speeds that bluray and hd-dvd simply wont hit .

That's neato but won't matter to consumers.

Whats silly to me is that now while hd-tv is so small of niche there will be a war with two techs that each have advnatages and disadvantages compared to each other . But are utterly pushed to the way side by hvd which could be ready in 2 years to start coming out .

In some ways I agree with you (and thus think that neither BR nor HD-DVD will be readily adopted for sometime). But to claim that HVD could be ready in 2 years for mass adoption? That I'm not willing to believe unless you work in the industry and have experience of how long these massive types of projects take to get coordinated amongst so many competing interests.

 

[jvd]

IF HVD players come out at 3x the price of a BR / HD-DVD players and the price doesn't ramp down quickly against them, HVD = dead. There will be little adoption and therefore not enough publishers of content behind it.

heh dvds came out at 3x the cost of laser disc . I don't see dvds dead

How will the average consumer notice the difference? Let's say there is a BR version of a movie and a HVD version? Both run at 1080p using the best compression methods available. What difference would be there? The difference would be the price of the player (using your example) and no where else. BR offers the best visuals, has quite a bit of content publishers behind it, and seems to be coming out soon.

Its not just visual . If you went to the store and saw a 6 disc bluray set of scrubs season 2 vs a 1 disc hvd set of scrubs which would u buy ? The average consumer would pick up the one disc

That's neato but won't matter to consumers.

Yea ? In the pc sector it will . I dunno about u but 1 tera byte of storage at speeds much greater than my hardrive is pretty intersting and I'm sure it will matter to many consumers

In some ways I agree with you (and thus think that neither BR nor HD-DVD will be readily adopted for sometime). But to claim that HVD could be ready in 2 years for mass adoption? That I'm not willing to believe unless you work in the industry and have experience of how long these massive types of projects take to get coordinated amongst so many competing interests

Where did I say mass adoption ? I mearly said just starting to come out . Its clearly there in my words .


Once it gets rolling with 1 terabyte discs as the first generation it will pick up alot of steam in the pc sector and then will cross over to the consumer electronic side

 

[London Geezer]

We've had this discussion already, jvd, but what do you put in more than 1 HVD disc, if it is a 1TB disc?

I have A LOT of back up stuff and it might reach 1TB in total, but then that's it. It's one single disc for ALL my stuff. Then? If i buy a reader/writer, at the price it is, i'd want to use it more ofteb than once every 5 years.

Eventually we'll need this kind of storage, but it won't happen for a long time.

 

[jvd]

We've had this discussion already, jvd, but what do you put in more than 1 HVD disc, if it is a 1TB disc?

Remember everything will scale . I remember when I moved from a floppy to a zip drive and it took awhile to fill up and I said hmm i will never need more than 1 disc . But sure enough I went from a 14.4 modem to a 28.8 modem . Then I got a cd r drive and the same thing happened. I moved to 56k and started to download more nad more thus filling up the cds quickly . Then dvd came adn I'm able to quickly fill up a dvd . Hd-dvd will be the same and same with bluray esp with fiber net connections starting to come out .

In 5 years instead of needing a day or two to download a movie I will be able to download a dvd quality video in a few mins . The video quality of what I download will also increase.

It keeps going l-b . I'm sure at first i wouldn't kow what to do with a terabyte of space. But i quickly will. My sister can prob fill one up quickly too since she does video editing at school esp once she starts using hd res

 

[Ty]

heh dvds came out at 3x the cost of laser disc . I don't see dvds dead

1> I don't recall LD players being 1/3rd the price of DVD players when the latter came out.

2> DVD players quickly dropped in price.

3> Furthermore, DVD wasn't competing with LD because LDs were never adopting by the mainstream.

4> Lastly, DVD players CLEARLY offered a better quality picture against it's true competitor, the VHS. This is not true in the BR/HD-DVD vs. HVD argument.

Its not just visual . If you went to the store and saw a 6 disc bluray set of scrubs season 2 vs a 1 disc hvd set of scrubs which would u buy ? The average consumer would pick up the one disc

Ok, I can buy that.

Yea ? In the pc sector it will . I dunno about u but 1 tera byte of storage at speeds much greater than my hardrive is pretty intersting and I'm sure it will matter to many consumers

True, I was referring to the non-spinning disc portion but yes, the speed difference could matter in the PC sector.

Where did I say mass adoption ? I mearly said just starting to come out . Its clearly there in my words .

To me, 'Starting to come out' is the same thing as 'ready for mass adoption'. And if that's not what you meant, then what to you is, 'Starting to come out'? Just a few highly expensive HVD players on the shelves?

I know you did NOT mean already ACHIEVED mass adoption. I'm just asking for clarification on the 'starting' portion.

Once it gets rolling with 1 terabyte discs as the first generation it will pick up alot of steam in the pc sector and then will cross over to the consumer electronic side

So do you believe that if BR (with all its support from Dell and others in the PC sector) picks up a lot of steam in the PC side, then it will cross over to the consumer electronics side?

FWIW, I don't know if I understand the relationship between the PC sector and the mass market side of living room. For all we know they could be two totally distinct sectors that don't cross over. And yes, this applies to BR as well. That is, my belief is that even if BR does well in the PC side, it may not help them in the consumer electronics side.

 

[jvd]

1) my highschool got a ld player about 2 years before dvds came out for 100$ . My first dvd player the year it came out was 500$

2)Yea they did and ?

3) So bluray which isn't even out yet has already been adopted by the mainstream ? No it hasn't infact as I mentioned in my first post about this bluray will be in a war with hd-dvd stoping mass penetration by either one from happening

4) Can you say that for sure ? hvd disc wont need heavy compresions The image can be much much better . Esp with 1terabyte vs 30 , 50 , 100 gigs

True, I was referring to the non-spinning disc portion but yes, the speed difference could matter in the PC sector.

Those two are directly tied to each other . Not to mention the replacment of hardrive mp3 players . You can use a hvd disc the sice of a mini cd and most likely get 300gigs at least on it and it shouldn't skip . Or in a car where it wont skip . How about in an actual camera with out expensive anti skip protection . Filiming in greater than 1080p to a 1 terbyte disc would be really nice

To me, 'Starting to come out' is the same thing as 'ready for mass adoption'. And if that's not what you meant, then what to you is, 'Starting to come out'? Just a few highly expensive HVD players on the shelves?

No , i expect alot of players in the pc sector coming out in 2007/2008 . It may not be the roll out bluray and hd-dvd will have but of course bluray and hd-dvd will be fighting with each other and 2008 is only 2 years after bluray and 3 after hd-dvd . Neither will be established and both will most likely be stuck in bitter war .

So do you believe that if BR (with all its support from Dell and others in the PC sector) picks up a lot of steam in the PC side, then it will cross over to the consumer electronics side?

Yup . but just because it has support from dell and others dosn't mean it will pick up steam . It all depends on the cost of the drive and blank media . If hd-dvd offers the drives cheaper and the discs cheaper it may not matter that bluray has a storage advantage because the cheaper cost of the discs could translate into the space advantage . I.e if a dual layer hd-dvd disc offers the same space as a single layer bluray disc but costs less then many will buy hd-dvd

 

[Ty]

1) my highschool got a ld player about 2 years before dvds came out for 100$ . My first dvd player the year it came out was 500$

You the school treasurer? Afair, LD players weren't available for that price because there weren't that many manufacturers and the supply wasn't high.

2)Yea they did and ?

That was part of my argument. IF HVD players did NOT quickly drop in price to be price competitive against BR/HD-DVD players it would be dead. It's clearly there.

and the price doesn't ramp down quickly against them

3) So bluray which isn't even out yet has already been adopted by the mainstream ? No it hasn't infact as I mentioned in my first post about this bluray will be in a war with hd-dvd stoping mass penetration by either one from happening

Likewise HD-DVD will be in a war against BR & HVD.

4) Can you say that for sure ? hvd disc wont need heavy compresions The image can be much much better . Esp with 1terabyte vs 30 , 50 , 100 gigs

Compression artifacts with current DVD media is pretty good (hardly noticeable if you have a good DVD player). BR should support even current methods at 1080p. So yes, the visual quality between the two will not be noticeable imo.

<snip nice uses for HVD>

Yes, those are definitely nice ideas. Doesn't matter yet, but those are nice ideas.

No , i expect alot of players in the pc sector coming out in 2007/2008 . It may not be the roll out bluray and hd-dvd will have but of course bluray and hd-dvd will be fighting with each other and 2008 is only 2 years after bluray and 3 after hd-dvd . Neither will be established and both will most likely be stuck in bitter war .

I doubt studios are going to line up behind HVD. Why would they risk supporting a 3rd media when HD-DVD and BR are still locked in a battle? That would mean supporting at least 3 versions of movies and retailers are not going to want that as well. Blockbuster and Hollywood video are likely going to have to make a choice between HD-DVD and BR. Imo, they're not about to carry HVD. This lack of content will kill HVD adoption for the consumer electronics side.

But IF HVD succeeds in the PC sector, it will be just like Faf was mentioning, just a replacement for the MO drive.

Yup . but just because it has support from dell and others dosn't mean it will pick up steam .

I wasn't saying it WILL pick up steam, I was just asking IF it did, would you still think that BR will cross over to the home electronics side.

<snipped argument re: HD-DVD vs BR wrt PC adoption because we weren't discussing it>