Sony to announce experimental 8 layer 200 GB Blu-ray discs

[kamuixtv]

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,117867,00.asp

Sony will announce next month that it developed an 8-layer version of the Blu-ray Disc that is capable of storing 200GB of data, according to a company spokesperson.


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The announcement will be made at the International Symposium on Optical Memory 2004, which takes from October 11 to October 15, in Jeju Island, South Korea, according to Sony. The company further plans to commercialize a 4-layer 100GB version in 2007, says Sony spokesperson Taro Takamine.

"The advantage of Blu-ray over DVD is definitely capacity, and we are extending our multilayer performance. The 8-layer is a technology demonstration. We haven't decided when we are going to commercialize it yet," Takamine says.

The development is the fourth recent boost for the format as it competes with high-deifinition DVD to replace conventional DVDs in coming years. Both Sony and Matsushita Electric Industrial, better known for its Panasonic brand, sell Blu-ray players.

But the players are expensive. A mass market will not develop for either of the new formats until major Hollywood studios are convinced that they can protect their content against piracy, according to analysts and industry watchers.



Making Headway
At the beginning of September, Blu-ray Disc backers announced that they added the MPEG4 and VC1 video codecs to the format, making for more efficient compression, meaning longer movies and more data can be stored on the same disc. VC1 is based on Microsoft's Windows Media 9 codec, and was previously called VC9. MPEG4.AVC is based on the H.264 codec.

Last week, Sony announced that it bought Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, potentially gaining access to and control of that studio's movie library. This week, Sony Computer Entertainment said it would adopt Blu-ray for its PlayStation 3 games console. The PlayStation 3 should reach the market by mid-2006, according to industry watchers.

The adoption of Blu-ray Disc for PlayStation 3 is seen as a major advancement for the format by Sony, because of the success of PlayStation and PlayStation 2 in promoting the adoption of DVD, Takamine says. PlayStation 3 will probably have compatibility with the 54GB version of the Blu-ray Disc, which can store about six times more data than a current DVD, according to Sony. The PlayStation 3 could be compatible with smaller-capacity Blu-ray Discs, according to Sony.

The 8-layer, 200GB capacity also shows the difference in approach that is developing between Blu-ray Disc, promoted as a very high storage medium by its backers, and high-definition DVD, which is supported by NEC and Toshiba.



Competing Format
HD-DVD is marketed as an easily made and low-cost, higher-capacity storage format by NEC and Toshiba. While HD-DVD hardware won't be on sale until 2005, Sanyo Electric said at the end of August that it decided to produce both components and players for the format, citing HD-DVD's ease of manufacturing.

Memory-Tech, one of Japan's largest optical disc makers, recently demonstrated HD-DVD discs production at a rate that meant it could be producing the discs at near-DVD prices in about one year from now.

Current HD-DVD discs have 30GB of storage. HD-DVD supporters say it is possible to convert a DVD line to an HD-DVD line within five minutes. The HD-DVD camp has not announced advanced plans to add more capacity to the discs because it wants HD-DVD makers to produce the discs at nearly the same price as current DVDs


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200GB Blu-ray? How long do you burn it? How "crappy" they are?

[Darth Paris]

What would be the point of a 200 GB disk? I guess you could use it for TV shows? What is the expected ratio as far as size for DVD MPEG-2 and the new HD video that may end up on these disks.

[Capmaster]

8-layer?

[indolikaa]

Think of all the midget clown porn you could fit on one disc, Cap.

[Capmaster]

Think of all the midget clown porn you could fit on one disc, Cap.

All of it 8)

[Olympiad]

wow, that makes it seem like Double layer is a piece of cake, amazing!

[NightWing]

But think of the tub of popcorn you would need to sti through a movie(s) on said 200gb disk.

So a 5 disk changer would hold about 1 tera byte....

[Still Learning Here]

How long will it take to burn this 200G disc?

[Capmaster]

But think of the tub of popcorn you would need to sti through a movie(s) on said 200gb disk.

So a 5 disk changer would hold about 1 tera byte....

Think of the bitrate you could run with using MPEG-8 or whatever, and make that 200GB disc a 2-hour movie

[Darth Paris]

How long will it take to burn this 200G disc?

I don't think we are anywhere near burning at 8 layers. These disks are only expierimantal.

[ViRaL1]

Think of all the midget clown porn you could fit on one disc, Cap.

All of it 8)

Are midget clown porn videos 'shorter' than other porn?

[SatStorm]

Copy / paste from here:https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1056674#1056674


Those Discs are needed because of the existance of the HDTV material.

I can only speak about what happens in Europe: We have two HDTV "formats". One based on MPEG 2 (there are already TV channels using it, more to come) and one based on MPEG 4 (proposed by the French and the Germans seems to like more...)

Those based on MPEG2, have bitrates more than 25.000! And from what I read, for perfect picture you need more (about 40.000). How you can store those? You can't! The market needs media to store those huge files.

The french proposition for mpeg 4, is more an alternative for broadcasting. It has a better commercial potention, but I don't feel that they gonna use it for storing video. Mpeg 2 seems to offer better picture.

So, there is a huge close future market for those discs.

[adam]

Still, 200 gigs is alot. HD material supports up to 6 times more resolution then D1. So let's say you would need roughly six times more storage, which you actually don't, and you are looking at fitting a typical movie in less then 60 gigs. Factor in the option of having more audio tracks, or more lossless compression, and it would still be difficult to find a need for more then 100 gigs. Even with alot of extras in HD as well, I just can't see how you would fill 200 gigs.

I think maybe they are just really looking ahead and want to get a format ratified that will become the international standard for MANY years to come. If these ever are used commercially I'm sure we won't see all 8 layers being used for quite some time. You just don't need that much storage for anything that is available right now. But whatever comes out after HD might need that kind of storage.

[SatStorm]

I still remember myself wondering what to put on a 3.2 GB HDs I bought back in 1998!

[psx_pirate]

Wow all this technology and some people (my dad for instance) still can't set the timer on the vcr

[chicola]

Maybe next:

an upgraded jukebox capable of playing spindles of Blu-ray Discs!!!

[sammie]

@Satstorm I'll top you, I remember being laughed at for buying a "commercial" 100 mb hard drive. I won't give a date but 20 meg drives were still the norm. But you know those 640x480 GIFs from the local BBS took up a lot or room.

[Dr. DOS]

How far in the future will players be that will 1) support HD resolutions (40k) and 2) support blueray technoogy.

[sammie]

How far in the future will players be that will 1) support HD resolutions (40k) and 2) support blueray technoogy.

There are some now Dr. DOS, but they are super expensive proprietary "videophile" boxes. I think you are probably asking when will there be standardized consumer type boxes. Kind of anyone's guess there are of course the 2 competing formats for the standard (plus a couple of minor ones). Nothing will happen too much until the studios pick one or both formats to release commercial disks. Unfortunately, I think the studios are dragging their feet here for two reasons. First, they don't want to back a loser, but second and possibly more importantly they want a next generation copy protection scheme in place.

My speculation is this is an area where you might see the "data" version lead the video version into the consumer market place. Since we are already seeing convergence in our end of the video spectrum, probably won't be a big deal, except for cost. Most HD moniters accept either or both computer in or DVI in. HD content is becoming available through satellite, over the air and some cable broadcasts. The only hold up then will be the next generation of puchaseable/rentable content. The biggest problem with the data end leading is that it won't drive the cost down as quickly as set top boxes will. It will get the drive costs below $1000 and eventually below $500, but probably would never get the cost below $300, remember the original Pioneer DVD burners? Same with the media, data will eventually get the "disks" under $10 but never down in the buck or two range.

[MikieV]

What would be the point of a 200 GB disk? I guess you could use it for TV shows? What is the expected ratio as far as size for DVD MPEG-2 and the new HD video that may end up on these disks.

If you are only thinking of making backup copies of DVDs - not much point.

If you are thinking of backing-up entire hard-drives, or archiving several hours of DV footage - then there is a point.

I'm not sure the rational for HDTV makes since, because Sony has just introduced a new camcorder that records 16:9 1080/60i HD to a miniDV tape - using MPEG2 compression.

Link: http://www.sonyhdvinfo.com/article.php?filename=Introduction-to-the-Sony-HDR-FX1

The "HDV" standard allows the MPEG2-compressed HDTV information to be recorded at the same bitrate used for miniDV.

Of course, they will also sell you US$18 HDV tapes!

Mike

[SatStorm]

@sammie: I remember Sinclair Microdrives for my ZX Spectrum 48K... 114Kb each (or it was 128k?). I could store 2 - 3 games and load the game is 10 seconds!
I saw a 5 1/4 floppy first time back then (1985) and thought "Half my games could be on some of those floppies"
Ohh God....

[raffie]

Yeah, when I bought my Atari 2600 I remember thinking, wooooow, 4k on one of these tiny cassettes!!!! How do they get 4k in that small case??!?

Naaah just messing with ya, I'm not even that old :P

[sammie]

Ok so I'm from the COBOL and Fortran on a deck of cards generation. We'll get that admission out of the way first. But I do have some "modern" Pascal programs saved on 8" floppies. We won't even talk about Scott Adams games on cassette tape.

[BSR]

“Who would need more than 640k of Memory”
– Bill Gates

[igalan]

I also think that 200GB isn't that great for an experimental technology. Many people have drives of 200 GB or even more, you can barely do one backup with only 200GB. If you said you have an optical medium capable of storing 20 TB, that would be different and probably enough for the next few years (let's remember that when someone said "XXX KB should be enough for..." ).

The DVD has appeared much recently than the CD and probably it won't last that long. It can't keep up, people wants more resolution and longer running times, you can't have both on a DVD with only 9 GB at max (mpeg4 may extend its life time like MP3 is doing with CD).

So 200 GB don't impress me much. Now we should see how thick is a disk with 8 layers, and how long it lasts.