Next-next-gen format

    If that 50gig Blu-Ray sounded large, think about 300gig disc.

    Maxell says that they have what they need to ship first holographic storage systems in late 2006.

    The disc Maxell is offering is developed by InPhase Technologies and it's 300gb storage and 20MB/s trasfer rate is just a pahse one of the format. InPhase claimed that the format can go up to 1.6TB storage and whopping 120MB/s transfer rates. To put that in scale, current gen DVD-9 goes for theoretical 8.5gig and 21 MB/s transfer rate.

    Again, like in the next-gen format war, there will be two manufacturers in here too, other side being HVD alliance with their HVD disc developed by Optware holding 200gig capacity and theoretical of 1TB and 1gig of transfer rate per second.

    Both of these discs are based on holographic technology.

    Holographic technology uses two lasers instead of one, one red and one blue-green to read and write data. The red one conventionally tracks the location and blue-green is used to access the data in the disc surface.

    If you need more comlicated explanation you have to check out some internet articles on this, which you might find from sparknote forums.

    TB is short for Terabyte or 1,000 gigabytes.

    That is very cool. Not exactly a surprise that this kind of technological breakthrough is in the wings.

    But adoption of course will require a market breakthrough like with any other new technology around cost of hardware, cost of media (the disks themselves) etc...

    I could go on and on right now, but I have to grab some lunch first...

    or how about 300gb of game data...

    the possibilities are endless

    it will also provide useful for game development, as in backing up data and transferring large amounts of it.

    or how about for movies, super super high quality dvds (porn)

    Quote from mike-0

    1. why would you need 1.6 tb's2. whats it going to cost

    1. I have worked in a small firm that made tv commercials and done small amount of editing, and I can say that you know those LaCie Biggest discs that hold 2TB? Well, you can wipe your ass with them.

    We had a file server with several Terabytes of capacity for all the original video material and the finished products. And a huge library full of DVDs and tapes as a backup.

    So that 1.6TB would come in handy as a storage.

    2. They ARE working on it as a viable future media to replace current media formats, so I guess they are going to be as cheap as current DVDs. You know, when you manufacture few hundred billion of something, the production costs are close to nil.

    Yeah death of MP3 and OGG.

    Just get the music uncompressed =)

    Btw. I remember reading they said holographic teqnology could get up to some ridiculous amounts of storage... Don't remember how much but a lot more than mentioned in this thread.

    Anyway exciting stuff

    Quote from PhilipK

    Yeah death of MP3 and OGG.Just get the music uncompressed =)

    Btw. I remember reading they said holographic teqnology could get up to some ridiculous amounts of storage... Don't remember how much but a lot more than mentioned in this thread.

    Anyway exciting stuff

    I'm guessing that you mean the Holographic memory cube theory.

    In theory, holographic storage can have petabytes (1000TB) and even exabytes (1000PB) of storage. But that is in theory, the holographic memory cube and holographic disc are two wery different things. The Holographic disc works much like a normal laser disc but uses holographic principles. Holographic memory cube is a 3 dimentional surface where you can write data, the insane of capacity is based on a principle that if we vary the lenght of the beam we can write data anywhere inside the solid cube, even overlapping each other in different angles.

    But that is just very wild theory and pretty much sci-fi at the moment, not even close to holographic disc which is very much like a laser disc and it is real.

    Obviously there is a technology adoption curve that this would have to follow, but consider this...

    If all PC games could be shipped on DVD instead of CD-Roms, think how much cost would be saved in packaging, shipping and disc media? On a per unit basis, maybe that adds up to a dollar, maybe a few dollars? Plus, imagine being able to put 9 gigs of data on one disk? You could have all your localized content on one disk and maybe have one version for all territories (or many major territories) thereby reducing the manufacturing and operations costs components of video game distribution (for PC games at least) and that could end up saving precious profits that hopefully will go back into making better games and maybe even trickle down to the studios. (we can dream, can't we?)

    Now imagine a terabyte or whatever one one disk, basically unlimited capacity for a game developer to put on whatever they want. Imagine not having to uncompress data when reading from the disk? Faster loadtimes? Better streaming on console? More detailed large environments instead of stark/bland large environments of current games?

    Better still....imagine a couple years from now when we all have such HVD drives on our PCs...you can go out and buy a custom bundle of games (like old school games or maybe a bunch of new games) all on one disk...

    Or imagine having a disk the size of a PSP disk or a Gamecube disk or smaller that can hould 30 gigs (or 100 gigs?) That could enable better/more content on "small" platforms like PSP devices or super small DVD playback devices for riding on an airplane or whatever. (of course, a video iPod is a pretty good solution to that problem too)

    Okay, I digress...

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