1TB Blu-Ray-compatible disc!

[akrako1]

From Slashdot:

red_dragon writes "An article on The Register tells the news of an announcement of a new 1TB optical drive and disc that will be backwardly compatible with Blu-ray discs. The technology, developed by Call/Recall in partnership with Nichia, uses a rhodamine-type dye in a 200+-layer recording medium that gives off light when excited by a laser beam, along with a single fluid-filled lens to read multiple layers by varying the amount of fluid to change the focal length. The technology is designed to work with Nichia's blue-violet laser diodes, which are already used in Blu-ray drives."

Full article and details at:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/28/call_recall_optical_drive/

[bendixG15]

And from the link ..

Nothing has been said about product availability. Guesstimation suggests 2010 or 2011 but there are plenty of potential obstacles to be dealt with.

Just one more thing to look foward and speculate about.

[zoobie]

ahh...life after blu-ray
nice

[VegasBud]

Guesstimation suggests 2010 or 2011...

Commercial production of near field recording equipment in 2 years? No way. If they get real lucky...maybe 12 years. Personally, I wouldn't bet on even 22 years. It's more likely that some other, more practical idea will pop up before they finish.

[PuzZLeR]

ahh...life after blu-ray
nice

More like the evolution of blu-ray to me.

[PuzZLeR]

It's so funny that a technology like this is emerging and making itself public when the current blu-ray writers and discs are still beyond affordable for most consumers today.

[SatStorm]

1TB discs...
I would love to see those, sold for 10 euros each and with 120 years of life span...
No DRM, no regions, back up friendly...
Freeware tools to handle them.....

Yeap, I know, no more beer for me tonight...

[festmaster]

If you have ever worked with rhodamine dyes, you know they are incredibly brilliant but a have terrible tolerance of sunlight. Don't flip the disks over when/if they come to market.

[PuzZLeR]

1TB discs...
I would love to see those, sold for 10 euros each and with 120 years of life span...
No DRM, no regions, back up friendly...
Freeware tools to handle them.....

Yeap, I know, no more beer for me tonight...

I remember 15 years ago how amazing the concept of being able to make your own CDs would be like when the technology was just emerging back then. And I remember 10 years ago how amazing it would be to have affordable technology that can store 15 times more than a CD on one disc - almost 10GB! - and not just for music, but which will be used even for high quality video to better the VHS and tape. Amazing how we take it for granted now that DvD burners are cheap, software is cheaply/freely available, and media is pennies each.

This same fascination with blue laser tech hit me in 2003 just like this is hitting me now. By 2010 or 2011 this will be another reality that we'll be taking for granted.

Yeah, this stuff is annoyingly super-expensive today, but even the €10 you mention will be a high price tag for this higher capacity media in the future.

[SatStorm]

You miss my point: It's not about the capacity. Capacity shall come to us consumers, one way or another. It's about no DRM, Regions and the ability to back up without becoming technically illegal.

[yoda313]

I don't see what the big deal is with 1tb harddrives readily available and reasonable affordable right now. And now that more and more devices are usb friendly the accessibility is amazing. Yes the potential is there for a terabyte disc but we can already do that on a harddrive (alright a formated 1tb won't be a full 1tb but then again neither would be a 1tb recordable disc be a full 1tb ).

[PuzZLeR]

@SatStorm: Ahh. I see your point.

But to be honest, although this is ONLY an opinion, I'm actually in favor of barriers to copying. The only time I'm against it is when the media is outdated such as VHS, HD-DvD, music tapes, game cartridges, or when/if DvD players die, etc., and you want to migrate the content to the new medium, otherwise I'm for the companies protecting their work.

Yeah, these schemes are a bit "Nazi" in some ways, but hey, it's their work. And c'mon, who the heck "backs up" their movies anyway?

Ok, now I get no beer tonight.

[PuzZLeR]

@yoda313: It looks like by the time the market finally brings us these 1TB discs we'll have HDD drives that are over 20TBs at a percentage of the price - as well as the fact that more and more media centers/players/etc will have USB inputs (including blu-ray players) to accept these drives.

And nobody may care for the fact that maybe by then, when empty 50GB BD discs and their burners become affordable. It may be too late.

Marketers aren't optimizing the timeline efficiently for their ROI.

[SatStorm]

Optical storage is a different form of other forms of storage, like magnetic or memory ones.

Personally, I'm feeling much more secure with optical storage than the rest technologies. I never liked to archive to something that a simply magnet can harm it.

Regarding back up: NAS servers (and media centers overall) is today's "back up". It's not about the 1:1 Copy anymore
We consumers discover and satisfy our needs the way we want. Not the way they force us to

[PuzZLeR]

Yes, NAS storage or file servers are the way to go in the very high capacity and/or professional medium today. Something like YouTube comes to mind... I remember the old days when a company's excuse for incompetence or mismanagement of information was "Oh sorry, our diskettes were wiped out with the magnetism through the airport's security...blah blah blah." Yeah right.

We consumers discover and satisfy our needs the way we want. Not the way they force us to

Well I do agree copy-protection programs can seem a bit like a dictatorship. When I personally migrate personal content from my camera or DVR I don't want some barrier in my face all the time. And anyone wishing to move data from an outdated/unsupported format should be able to do so (assuming ownership).

But for commercial items, well, let's put it this way. When I protect my house with alarm systems and such, I'm protecting my property and when putting up an extra barrier to break in there is not one thought that goes through my mind about stifling anyone's rights. But, like I said, this is my opinion regarding this very sensitive topic.

[SatStorm]

Well Puzzler, I had many bad incidents with HDD, Raids, etc. I don't trust HDD. I still remember how I lost in a moment a 3 years project, because that ******* HDD I bought that same day for back up, crashed. Since then, I back up my projects only on optical discs (DVD-R), twice. I store them separately and in different houses, just in case a catastrophe happens, like the end of the world, an earthquick, a tsunami, the coming of the Antichrist , etc. I'm now prepared for everything.

Regarding the rights, copy protection IMO doesn't protect the rights of the artists. The rights of the distributor, maybe. And since there are always ways to bypass it, so what's the point? And let say "OK, copy is "bad". What about Regions?
Anyway, is your opinion, it is my opinion and yeap this subject is very sensitive. In the matter of fact, I'm not against the artists but against the system. It's outdated. But this is another subject to discuss and not in this topic!

[PuzZLeR]

What about Regions?

This I agree should be abolished. No point in this.

Anyway, is your opinion, it is my opinion and yeap this subject is very sensitive...But this is another subject to discuss and not in this topic!

Agreed.

I'm sorry about your crash. I've lost data before and it hurts, but I was luckier than you as it was only a few files for a project I later abandoned anyway - but it was enough to learn my lesson the easy way. Now I'm even prepared for an alien invasion if it occurs - backup, backup, backup. And yes, the separate location is paramount and actually a service that some companies actually provide for businesses - they come to your location daily to pick up a copy of your data for good measure.

I too love the optical disc, but currently the DvD is much too small for my collection (I would currently need to manage hundreds of them!), so the external HDD is my baby now. It's too bad. I would easily switch back to discs today if they were 50GBs+ and similar in price, and availability, to DvD-Rs.

But it looks like by the time empty BDs become mature and TB discs become affordable it may be too late for the pretty shiny silver thing since they would still be trailing the progress of HDs by a landslide when a small cigarette pack drive will have 20TBs+ and be a more feasible option logistically and economically for size, capacity, price/GB, portability and even compatibility too.

[SatStorm]

One measure I always had in mine, is time: If a disc offers me 4 hours of storage, it's OK. At the time being, I can have 2 hours of 1080p on a DL DVD-R, using H264. If I go 720p, I have about 3 hours. Close enough, but sure not enough.
For Standard Definition content, H264 offers me about 4 hours per DVD-R (4.7Gb) in perfect picture quality. It's not bad.

That crash happened 4 years ago. I manage to save 40% of that project, but the rest 60% I had to make it all over again. That was the day I got the Hauppauge 250PVR. It never matched the quality I previous had, but I learn to stay with that for a while.

Meanwhile, everybody is talking about Solid State Memory solutions if the short future. Well, those solutions may replace HDD, but not archiving. We need something else for that. Optical discs I believe is a better choise, but we shall see.

[PuzZLeR]

One measure I always had in mine, is time: If a disc offers me 4 hours of storage, it's OK. At the time being, I can have 2 hours of 1080p on a DL DVD-R, using H264. If I go 720p, I have about 3 hours. Close enough, but sure not enough.
For Standard Definition content, H264 offers me about 4 hours per DVD-R (4.7Gb) in perfect picture quality. It's not bad.

I personaly think that 2 hours of 1080p content on one DL may be squeezing a bit, but I agree that using H.264 gives you that extra space for sure - 4 hours of SD per DvD-R for great quality is realistic. For those encoding H.264 content in SD, I'm currently working on a guide to encode this SD content that will play on BD. Personally I think it would be great to have 50 hours of high quality SD video on one disc that will easily play when you pop it into your blu-ray player - no features necessary such as MP4, MKV, etc. However, I do believe much of the advantage will be for compatibility for distribution/delivery among stand-alones, not for archiving on disc. I still believe much of this content will be archived on HDs nevertheless, just like what most x264 users are primarily using to archive today.

Meanwhile, everybody is talking about Solid State Memory solutions if the short future. Well, those solutions may replace HDD, but not archiving. We need something else for that. Optical discs I believe is a better choise, but we shall see.

Up until recently this method was very expensive, and certainly not for archiving. I'm personally cheering for the optical disc, but capacity/price unit will determine the winner. But I believe both will be mostly for delivery, not for archiving. The external HDD is moving way ahead - it currently can store what we will be waiting years for an affordable equivalent on disc.

But like I said, if the capacity was there, I would stick with optical discs.

[SatStorm]

Interesting: I would like to see your guide when finished.
I use to do the same with HD-DVD authored-like DVD-Rs, playable on HDDVD players. Users of this forum pointed me that the same is possible with BD discs, but I never seat down to study and try it myself.
This is obviously the next step. And my StDef material waits to ender the H264 age!

[RabidDog]

Flash memory is inherently more robust than hard disk drives. Many tests done (including blowing them up) flash drives still recoverable, casing blown apart, but when chip read. still ok! About the only thing that can corrupt them is cosmic rays....those powers still elude me.

New flash types Mram(IBM) and MLC (multilevel cells) are moving in and increasing the storage density and decreasing the cost....
But of course HDD are known Tech and are continually speeding up and Cheapening themselves(like Paris.H)

Segways are not seen on the streets

[tom55]

Yay disk write errors!

[PuzZLeR]

And my StDef material waits to ender the H264 age!

I am not trying to change the world, and I still believe SD's home is with DvD/MPEG-2, but if you are using H.264 and using SD content, I personally believe that there is no better way than full BD compliance. I know BD should be for HD, but just imagine its use with H.264 and high capacity discs for SD - you can have 5 seasons of a TV show, or 1000 music videos, etc all on one disc and play as standard as your DvDs play on your DvD player. I don't want to side track this thread, but for storage this is exciting to me.

I have the spec downpacked, but the only issue is here in NTSC land (unlike your area) we have something called IVTC deinterlacing to 23.976fps - a frame rate which is NOT supported on BD for SD content (for some unholy reason), but is accepted for HD... It does work fluidly on every BD player I've tested with it, but when Scenarist does NOT accept it, and it's not "standard", I can't help but feel less than 100% confident of its compliance.

Anyhow, once a good pulldown scheme is ready for H.264 this will be 100% complete. There is one in the making, but it's not yet perfect. I'm currently working with a friend on this, but it needs just a bit of time.