DVD with capacity 300 GB next month.

[roma_turok]

Hitachi Maxell this week plans to demonstrate a 300GB version of a holographic optical disc that will be available to select customers in the entertainment industry beginning next month.

In conjunction with InPhase's demonstration of the new DVD technology, Displaytech, maker of ferroelectric liquid crystal on silicon (FLCOS) technology, announced the availability of its Spatial Light Modulators (SLM) for use in holographic data-storage devices. The SLM allows data to be written to holographic discs that feature a capacity 10 to 100 times greater than high-definition HD-DVD or Blu-ray formats.

InPhase Technologies, which was spun off from Bell Laboratories in 2000, is producing the holographic disc – called the Tapestry HDS-300R. The launch of the product to a limited number of customers next month will be followed by a general product release in the first quarter of 2007 aimed at enterprise-class users.

The new DVD is being demonstrated this week at the International Broadcast Equipment Exhibition in Tokyo. InPhase announced the technology breakthrough in holographic storage earlier this year.

While InPhase would not disclose pricing at this time, it has been reported that the product will likely retail for US$100 to $125 based on the price of Maxell's current Tapestry disk products.

While the first generation of the 300GB DVD is aimed at commercial use, InPhase expects a consumer-grade product launch over the next two years in what it hopes will be a standardized format.

Lisa Dhar, vice president of media development at InPhase, said the product will first be marketed to the entertainment industry for high-speed, high-capacity film recording, and to enterprise-class companies for data archiving operations. The 300GB product will have data transfer rates of about 20MBbps.

In 2008, InPhase plans a second-generation 800GB rewritable optical disc with data transfer rates of about 80MBbps, with plans to expand its capacity to 1.6TB by 2010.

InPhase is hoping to displace magnetic tape cartridges with its first products, according to Dhar.

http://www.digitmag.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=6553

[pepegot1]

Just think, you can put everything on one DVD, or maybe two, if you're loaded..

[RLT69]

holographic optical disc

I've been saying that all along. Kiss Blueray goodbye.

$100 for 300 GB is a reasonable price. A 320GB hard drive goes for about $100. Obviously buying a 3 or 5 pack might be costly :P

One question I have is will it scale? Could you, for example, get discs that holds 5, 10, 15, even 50 GB? If so, this would be one hot product.

The future is now 8)

[pstedman]

Can we just skip HD-DVD and Blu-ray? This is a real leap forward. I do hope they can manage a consumer launch over the next 2 years.

[Huxley]

Sounds great.
Room for all the image quality, sound tracks and extras.
Also room to grow for any new hd options.
Protective case and fair price.

[RabidDog]

its NOT a DVD or a dvd replacement who wants to pay £50 per film.(derr ? thats how much blu-ray movies cost!) this is good for the upcoming shd format 4096x2048 approx 1.6tb per film. Protective case now but at consumer level no case (see DVD-ram)

[XtremeFuturistic]

I HEARD SOMEWHERE ON NET, NOT REMEMBER WHERE>>>

300 TB HARDDISKS TO BE READY BY 2010, MANUF BY SEAGATE.
THEY R IN THE PROCESS OF IT n SURELY GONNA COME UP.

WITH THOSE ONES, THESE DVDs WONT BE THAT OF A MIRACLE.

PONDER OVER IT - 1000 TIMES THE CURRENT HARD DISKS, BE MADE IN JUST 3 YEARS FROM NOW. TECHNOLOGY IS GOIN AT A FREAK SPEED.........................

[DereX888]

While the first generation of the 300GB DVD is aimed at commercial use, InPhase expects a consumer-grade product launch over the next two years in what it hopes will be a standardized format.

thats a very LOOOOOONG time in current technology advances status.
I expect to have some 60GB microSD cards by that time rather than a bulky 300gb disc which won't be even compatible with any entertainment device (players) on the market... oh yeah, expect those 300gb harddisk to cost $20 on sale (if you find'em) by that time too...
nah, it won't replace HD-DVD or BR-DVD, sorry
If it was on the market NOW then who knows...

[dnix71]

Just think of how much data you can lose at once with one of those

This is probably aimed at movie theater chains. You could have one disk drive with all the current showings on it, feeding them to a digital projector all at once.

[shelbyGT]

Honestly, these would be way way overkill for home movies. You don't need that much space. You'd have so much left over.

[edDV]

This is probably aimed at movie theater chains. You could have one disk drive with all the current showings on it, feeding them to a digital projector all at once.

Not quite. Multiplex Theater quality 2Kx1K Digital Cinema uses 250Mb/sec raw rate (130GB/hr.) plus up to 16 channels of 24bit PCM audio. They are unlikely to compress to extremes for DVD distribution. 4kx2k would use four times more.

They say the Holographic drive above can run at up to 80Mb/s or 3-4x compression for 2Kx1K or ~40GB/hr. This might be OK for small screen multiplex cinemas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Cinema_Initiatives

[RLT69]

pepegot1 wrote:
While the first generation of the 300GB DVD is aimed at commercial use, InPhase expects a consumer-grade product launch over the next two years in what it hopes will be a standardized format.


thats a very LOOOOOONG time in current technology advances status.
I expect to have some 60GB microSD cards by that time rather than a bulky 300gb disc wink.gif which won't be even compatible with any entertainment device (players) on the market... oh yeah, expect those 300gb harddisk to cost $20 on sale (if you find'em) by that time too...
nah, it won't replace HD-DVD or BR-DVD, sorry
If it was on the market NOW then who knows...

Are you kidding me? 2007 to 2008 is a long time? Considering blu-ray and HD-DVD just came out; have next to nothing market penetration. No one is clamoring to buy either format, in fact people are taking a WAIT AND SEE approach because they do not want to be sucked into a format war.

A format war benefits new technology. HVD will easily supplant Blu-ray or HD-DVD.

Think about it. One disc can contain an entire season of a TV show. Hell one disc could contain several seasons of a TV show! The capacity is simply amazing.

[rijir2001]

About 5 years ago 3M came up with a Florescence disc the same size as a DVD that could hold Terrabytes worth of information over hundreds of layers by focusing the laser to differnt depths. And the players could also play regular DVDs. Why are we going backwards? Why not go all out instead of a wasting time with Blue Ray and HDDVD?

[edDV]

About 5 years ago 3M came up with a Florescence disc the same size as a DVD that could hold Terrabytes worth of information over hundreds of layers by focusing the laser to differnt depths. And the players could also play regular DVDs. Why are we going backwards? Why not go all out instead of a wasting time with Blue Ray and HDDVD?

Probably 3M couldn't get the cost reasonable.

To me, a 4.3GB DVDR seems as confining as a 1.4MB floppy did in the late 80's. Time for a >100GB cheap replacement.

[gotnotime]

Looks like a first generation floppy drive. sure its not 300KB instead of 300GB?

[edDV]

Huh? The first 8" floppy disk held only 80 KB (IBM)
The 5.25" first attempt was 98.5 KB
The first standardized 3.5" was 180KB per side.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk#Origins.2C_the_8-inch_disk

See how far we've come?

[gotnotime]

I stand corrected. I was actually thinking about the 3.5" disks as they had the shutter doors to protect the media. The first gen HP 3.5" disks were single sided at 280Kb

[edDV]

Point was we have gone from a hundreds of KBytes to soon hundreds of GBytes and prices keep dropping.

My only beef is it's been a long wait for >10GByte per side. I blame "Hollywood" interests.

[vico1]

My only beef is it's been a long wait for >10GByte per side. I blame "Hollywood" interests.

Totally Agree!

Oh, and one other thing...I WANT THOSE 3M DISCs!...TERRABYTES...JEEEEZ!...

[DereX888]

read my lips:

...V...A...P...O...R...W...A...R...E...


wanna bet?

[vico1]

read my lips:

...V...A...P...O...R...W...A...R...E...


wanna bet?

OH, No Doubt!

But just like everyone here...I Want the Future...NOW!...

[DereX888]

Point was we have gone from a hundreds of KBytes to soon hundreds of GBytes and prices keep dropping.

yeah, but in the same time the Popular Operating System (POS in short ) went from kilobytes of UI to gigabytes of GUI just for the icons themselves in Aero
I'd say we haven't move that much forward as most of people think, we just use nicer GUIs

P
My only beef is it's been a long wait for >10GByte per side. I blame "Hollywood" interests.

I won't blame them, I'd just point the finger straight to sony...

[shelbyGT]

I still am fine with CD-R's for the most of what I need it to do, only bust out a DVDR for movies. Heck, my 1GB flash pen gets the brunt work of my file storing.

[DereX888]

I still am fine with CD-R's for the most of what I need it to do, only bust out a DVDR for movies. Heck, my 1GB flash pen gets the brunt work of my file storing.

My most used 'portable storage' is actually a SD Card... I just wish they would 'grow' faster, 4GB is still not enough
But yeah, I still use CD-Rs for backing up my new CDs and making them actual real/pure CDDA the moment I get them (anyone else noticed that almost none so-called "CD" from i.e. Sony Music bears standard CDDA logo anymore?)

[Tom Saurus]

It would be nice someday to buy a whole series, placed on one disc. It will probably take a long time before this technology is affordable.

[DereX888]

It would be nice someday to buy a whole series, placed on one disc. It will probably take a long time before this technology is affordable.

Actually, it only depends on what quality you expect.
Sure if you want any given series in a High Def quality it'll be few years before its affordably possible.
But if your expectations are lower, its possible to have entire series on a single DL disc in mpeg4/x264 already nowadays...