G.E. discovers how to put 500GB on a disc.

[Shorty0061]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=3660

G.E. discovers how to put 500GB on a disc; eventual Blu-ray killer?

General Electric says its researchers have achieved a breakthrough in digital storage technology that will allow standard-size discs to hold the equivalent of 100 DVDs.

It’s merely a lab success at this stage, but the new technology is intended to work in products that can be mass-produced at affordable prices, the company says.

The New York Times reports:

But optical storage experts and industry analysts who were told of the development said it held the promise of being a big step forward in digital storage with a wide range of potential uses in commercial, scientific and consumer markets.

“This could be the next generation of low-cost storage,” said Richard Doherty, an analyst at Envisioneering, a technology research firm.

Can it really?

First, the facts: the G.E. researchers’ work is in the field of holographic storage, an optical process that stores 3D images and digital data together, encoding it all and placing it on light-sensitive material such as a DVD. The theory is that holographic storage has the potential to pack data far more densely than conventional optical technology, such as what is used in conventional DVD and Blu-ray.

Holographic discs could hold 500 gigabytes of data. (In comparison, Blu-ray comes in 25-gigabyte and 50-gigabyte discs, and a standard DVD holds 5 up to about 8 gigabytes.)

Now, the question. If this breakthrough can be distrubuted on cheap media, it will drop the price-per-gigabyte ratio dramatically. But is this technology coming too late, at least in the consumer market?

The latest trend in the consumer HDTVs is to connect your set top and media player (DVD, Blu-ray, whatever) to the Internet. That connectivity means content will flow directly to your viewing area — no media needed and limited only by the cable and ISP it’s flowing through. So when I see breakthroughs like this, I wonder: aren’t we already heading toward a medialess world?

And if not, hasn’t flash media proved itself a more worthy and useful format?

neat

[Alucard]

I swear panasonic figured this out last year.

[Xero]

And now we wait for Sony to announce their PS11 with Holographic Disk Support.

[progmetal]

Originally Posted by Alucard

I swear panasonic figured this out last year.

Pioneer made a 500GB blu-ray disc last year, so yeah it's nothing new.

http://www.pioneer.eu/eur/content/pr...GB_Bluray.html

[Drunken Savior]

You can't kill BluRay by simply making a disc that holds more than a BluRay does. Not in the immediate future anyways.

[Kiuju2k]

Originally Posted by xero

And now we wait for Sony to announce their PS11 with Holographic Disk Support.

Thought it was ps9?

[burpingcat]

The latest trend in the consumer HDTVs is to connect your set top and media player (DVD, Blu-ray, whatever) to the Internet. That connectivity means content will flow directly to your viewing area — no media needed and limited only by the cable and ISP it’s flowing through. So when I see breakthroughs like this, I wonder: aren’t we already heading toward a medialess world?

Not with the bandwidth caps ISPs are pining to implement

[Zachalmighty]

Maybe this will make GE some money since they are hemorrhaging it.

[Dr. Bombay]

They...won't.

See the rub is, they're using holographic imaging in order to compress the data. That works, but it requires a completely new type of drive. The laser is similar to current ones though so it'll be backwards compatible with everything.

Meanwhile, yeah, last year Panasonic and Pioneer made a 500gb blu-ray drive using existing blu-ray lasers. So there is literally 0 point in funding holographic discs right now. On top of which, since 1080p is currently the industry standard and the average 1080p feature is only about 18 gigs, which smaller than a single layer blu-ray disc, the need for such large mediums is restricted to things like games and permanent back up storage.

So...yeah, GE made a technology that will more than likely never be used to cost and lack of interest.

[MarionetteKazuk]

It'll PROBABLY get used in industries for data storage, but I don't see it being used for consumer-use any time soon.