GE unveils breakthrough micro-holographic disc that will have capacity of 100 DVDs

[NeoConsSuck]

Source: Schenectady Gazette

NISKAYUNA — Scientists at GE Global Research announced today the development of a computer disc capable of holding 20 times the data contained on a Blu-ray disc, or 100 times the capacity of a regular DVD, a technological breakthrough expected to revolutionize optical storage technology.

“We have gone from surface storage to volume storage,” said Brian Lawrence, a research scientist who leads GE’s Holographic Storage program.

The discs can hold 500 gigabytes, equal to the capacity of 20 single-layer Blu-ray discs, 100 DVDs or the hard drive for a large desktop computer. A gigabyte is equal to 114 minutes of uncompressed CD-quality audio.

<snip>
“The day when you can store your entire high definition movie collection on one disc and support high resolution formats like 3-D television is closer than you think.”


Read more: http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2009/apr/27/0427_disc/

[Beetwasher]

1. So I Should Hold Off On Purchasing A Blue Ray DVD Player?

:shrug:

[margotb822]

19. Unless you have a lot of blu-ray dvds

it's a dumb purchase anyways (imo). I just got an upconverter for my dvd player and it makes my regular dvds look great on an hd tv.

[Lance_Boyle]

2. yay a new optical disc technology

500GB on an optical disc at a projected cost of $0.10 per gig = $50 disc. Add another couple hundred for a burner/player. Why in the HELL would I want to do that when I can walk into the store TODAY and pay $100 for a 1TB hard drive (twice the storage of the new "wonder disc") without need for a burner/player?

I'll take "another ill-conceived and worthless-for-most-anything optical storage medium" for $100, Alex.

[w4rma]

9. The price will come down. The prices are always high when first introduced to offset R and D. (nt)

[Lance_Boyle]

13. It's not the price - it's the utility, or lack thereof.

Optical storage is going the way of the dot-matrix printer.

[Toucano]

20. I agree. Optical storage is on the way out. n-t

[Occulus]

24. Already happening.

I can go out tomorrow and get a blu-ray drive for my PC for $145 (it's most impressive when you have a nice big HDTV; with YouTube and the rest, you don't even need cable TV):

• Playback high definition Blu-ray movies, up to 6 times better picture resolution than DVD
• Support 8X BD-ROM reading
• BD, DVD, & CD playback for a complete home entertainment media center
• Support all CD, DVD writing including DVD-RAM
• SATA interface for better performance & compatibility

And man am I tempted. It's a LiteOn drive, too, and I've had good experience with those.

Their BD-RW is still almost $300, though, but you're right: that will come down.

[shraby]

3. Does this mean we could back up our whole

hard drive to one dvd?

[Lance_Boyle]

8. Already much cheaper to back it up to another hard drive.

Will still be cheaper to back it up to another hard drive after this comes out. May even be cheaper to back it up to solid-state media by then.

[JFreitas]

25. What about flash drives...

What about Flash drives? I'm seeing pens with 8G or more for 5$. It would be REALLY great to start having pens of 20 or 40G. I'd consider that to be much better than disks with 500G, because pens are a lot more versatile.

[nc4bo]

27. Sweet!!!! I'll be all over this!

My drives currently hold about 1.5 terabytes of "stuff". Many of it old time radio programs (Dragnet, Inner Sanctum, Whisper, Great Gildersleeve, etc). I would sooooo love to be able to back my precious OTR programs up onto just one or two discs.

Now it's just a matter of sitting back and waiting for the price of new technology to drop :rofl:

[Speck Tater]

4. I can't see studios offering 100 movies on a single disk.

It wouldn't make financial sense. They'd have to charge a ridiculous price for one disk to offset royalties and license fees. Who's going to pay $1000 for a disk with 100 movies on it. Especially if you are only really interested in 23 of those movies?

Nope, this one is going nowhere as far as a medium for commercial distribution of movies. I'd bet on Blu-Ray to dominate for now. My guess is this will show up as a computer peripheral, but not as a set-top box for movies.

[nyc 4 Biden]

14. IT would be useful for selling television shows...

that span many seasons. Or they could sell an entire season of broadcast games for a sports team.

[onehandle]

15. Blu-Ray is the end of the line for physical video distribution.

Internet delivery of video, through set-top devices and computers, will take over during Blu-Ray's run.

Sell your Blockbuster stock. They're done.

[Duer 157099]

5. Well all that wiretapped data ain't gonna store itself, ya know

I have zero doubt that much of this technology is motivated by the governmental agencies who are finding themselves in quite the predicament with all of the data they are indescriminatly sweeping up. They have to stash it somewhere until they can write the algorithms to search it for what they want to find.

[onehandle]

6. Removable media is dead. At least nearly. nt

[Ian David]

7. I could put all my porn on two discs! n/t

[jmowreader]

10. This is going to be good for two things

The first is the storage of REALLY massive data sets--especially where a lot of photos are involved.

The other is digital distribution of movies to theatres.

[struggle4progress]

11. All future records of our civilization will be written on a confusing mish-mash

of technological storage media that have become obsolete, using lost protocols

We know Archimedes' version of infinitesimal calculus, because somebody wrote it on scraped animal skin

http://physics.weber.edu.nuyd.net:8090/carroll/Archimedes/images/arch_eabig.jpg
http://physics.weber.edu/carroll/Archimedes/palimpset.htm

But our records will never be recovered if there's another Dark Age: the technologies and protocols are complicated -- they change rapidly and are forgotten

Fridge-sized tape recorder could crack lunar mysteries
By Nic MacBean
Posted November 10, 2008 15:00:00
Updated November 11, 2008 06:48:00
Map: Perth 6000
... Mr Holmes has kept the tapes in a climate-controlled room ... and it was only when he stumbled upon a 1960s IBM729 Mark 5 tape drive at the Australian Computer Museum Society that his company had the ability to unlock the information. The computer enthusiasts who run the Sydney-based group agreed to lend the almost archaic-looking recorder, which is in need of tender love and care, to Mr Holmes ... "The drives are extremely rare, we don't know of any others that are still operating," he said. "It's going to have to be a custom job to get it working again. It's certainly not simple, there's a lot of circuitry in there, it's old, it's not as clean as it should be and there's a lot of work to do" ... http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/11/10/2415393.htm

[Downwinder]

17. Can anybody still read an 8" floppy?

[struggle4progress]

18. I've never even used an 8". I've used 5.25" and I think I know where to find an old but still

functioning machine with a 5.25" drive. I have machines with 3.5" drives. But I'd bet almost all 8" drives are in landfills.

[hunter]

22. I have an 8" floppy drive.

But I havent fired it up for a long time. I haven't found any interesting 8" floppies for a long, long time either.

I'm not sure it would work. There's always some damned plastic or rubber part that disintegrates or capacitors that go bad.

[slackmaster]

12. Glad I bought some GE stock last month

But seriously, nobody needs that much porn.

[SkyDaddy7]

16. LOL!!

Yes, I got some GE stock at $8-$9 a share...I hope this helps prop up the capital arm some more! LOL!

...And YES, that is a ton of HD Porn!! LOL!

[Grinchie]

21. Sorry Sony!

I guess that heavy handed marketing approach kind of backfired an you'se mugs.

[hunter]

23. Now Microsoft has something to shoot for with their next operating system.

It will fill the whole disk up and still run slower than grandpa's Windows 95 system.

[Thor_MN]

31. "grandpa's Windows 95 system" Ouch, that hurts...

I actually used Windows 2 and DOS before that. I am NOT that old.

[blindpig]

26. More dumb shit that nobody really needs.

How many movies can ya watch at one time?

Ooh, nice, shiny! Must have!

Fuckin' Pavlov's dogs.

[Javaman]

28. And you feed into that Pavlovian theory by thinking that it only will be used for movies.

have fun with that.

[blindpig]

29. Most sales will be for the purpose of entertainment, be assured.

Sure, there are more practical applications, but that will be small change.

Consider the volume of usage of cell phones relative to their necessity, about a thousand to one.

NEW! IMPROVED!

It ain't about nothing but sales.

[Javaman]

30. meh, maybe...

the tech will evolve to where solid state will be the norm. This "new" tech won't be used for movies, it will be use for science apps and storage.

but then again, Japan recently announced this...

Ultra HD draws crowds, interest at NAB2006

http://broadcastengineering.com/newsletters/hd_tech/200... /

And there is actually a tech standard with a higher resolution that this in the works, but I can't find an article on it. I just heard it mentioned in a podcast.

So after all of this, you might be right after all and I apologize for my snarkiness.

Cheers.

[slackmaster]

32. Luddite