Philips Blue Laser Itty Bitty Disc Drive

Acid-F1ux writes "Over at news.com they are running a story about how Philips is demonstrating a prototype miniature disc drive that uses a coin-size disc capable of storing nearly twice as much data as a standard-sized CD. "

Cool to see Philips designing some new standards

[Anonymous Coward]

With all the new pushes towards something to replace the CD, I'm glad to see Philips involved again. They did well with the CD and this sounds like somethingt really useful and worth an upgrade as oppose to things like DataPlay.
-N

Put a case around it!

[Nanite]

I hope they put a case around it ala minidisc. It's so hard to keep your CDs unscratched as it is, a tiny disc will only make it harder.

N

This will be another ZIP/LS-120 drive

[Anonymous Coward]

Too little, too late. It's not a big enough capacity to replace CD's for storage while a much bigger format (DVD) is getting ready to take hold. ZIP drives faced this. They had greater capacity than floppy disks, but with CD's taking hold, they seemed like a waste to many people. Sure, they sold quite a few, but their window was bigger and their capacity were still 80x bigger than floppies. This, however, is twice the capacity as a CD? Not enough. If you want to make something, make it atleast comparable to DVD in capacity. I don't think most people really care that much about physical size when it comes to removable media.

Finally!

[MImeKillEr]

A (hopefully) cheap way for me to back up my data without having to resort to SAN or tape.. The article mentions that they're hoping to get standard-size discs to store upto 27GB of data... I could back up my home system on just *3* CDs!

Of course, given the price of DVD writers initially, I'd expect these to be quite pricey when they first come out.

I didn't see any mention of backwards-compatibility with current devices. Imagine burning 27GB of MP3s (or .wavs to play in the non-MP3 car stereo) only to find out that your favorite player can't read it....

Mmmmm Storage

[OzPhIsH]

God, this is the kind of new technology that makes me giddy!! Imagine the things that could benefit from tiny mass storage devices. Imagine your digital music player that holds 1000 MB instead of a paltry 64 or 128. A digital camera that holds hundreds of high-resolution photos instead of 30 or so. Sure, these aren't new ideas, but they'll be so much BETTER with this tech. Remember in MIB when he's got the enitre Elvis collection on one of those tiny disc's? That could become a reality in the not so distant future. The possibilites of a cheap, portable, mass storage medium has me drooling. I have a few questions though.
How much? Just how expensive will devices based on this technology be?
Standard? There appears to be a lot of key companies in this "Blu-Ray" group. Does that mean consumers can expect a standard medium, or are there going to be 5 different manufacturer versions that we need to check compatability agaist.
When? When will these devices become available to the public? Or, more likely, how long will it take for the 'How Much' question to be answered with 'cheap enough for your average consumer'.
Re-Writability? Are these devices write once, or can the be re-written several times over? I've been waiting for the difinitive floppy disk replacement for a long time. Zip hasnt cut it. Super-disc hasn't cut it. But cheap portable 1 gig storage? Yeah, now you got me interested.

Re:The unsung blue LED

[hagardtroll]

Does this mean that Ultra-violet LEDs will be tbe next big leap in technology?

Too small?

[ceswiedler]

I've wondered in the past what the smallest form factor for technologies like this is, in terms of human usability. A CD isn't particularly big, and it's physically easy to insert into a player. It's considerably more difficult to insert a quarter ($.25) sized disc into a slot; how many quarters have you dropped over the years trying to feed vending machines, video games, etc? How many CDs have you dropped while trying to load them?

The same thought goes for devices like PDAs, phones, and laptops. Logic says these should be as small as possible, and probably unified into one device. But human hands require large keyboards (if keyboard input is used) and human eyes require large screens (if visual output is used). A nice thought is screens which fold up like paper, and unfold to whatever size is required. Audio output and input (voice recognition) don't require much physical size, but there are many tasks which are not well suited for voice input. Or so I think, but then I'm used to a keyboard.

Size of pits and scratches

[Hualon]

I remember when DVD Audio was first introduced and a lot of people in the HI-FI rags were wondering whether blue-laser technology would be feasible.

The issue of taking any sized disc (12cm, 3cm, what have you) and using pits small enough and densely packed enough to achieve the capacity that Philips has doesn't seem practical to me.

When you consider that a blue laser with a wavelength of ~425nm is reading information off of a 3cm disc, that makes the pits pretty damn small. When you're talking about capacity in the 1GB range on such a disc, the disc simply must be a multi-layer (probably 3-4) multi-substrate hybrid unlike any DVD or CD we know.

With this new technology, people must realize that such a disc is incredibly susceptible to scratching and will require a caddy. When DVD was still being discussed back in the day, it was assumed that the discs would all be in caddies but that was deemed inappropriate by marketing folks.

A 1cm scratch on a 12cm CD disc renders the disc with 83% of the surface intact and 581Mb of 700Mb intact. Compare that to a DVD with 5.7Gb of data... that's a loss of 969Mb!

Now, a 1cm scratch on a 3cm disc is a 33% loss of data. Scratch this disc and you lose 348.16 Megs! That's not good! Hey Philips, ENFORCE CADDIES! -Hualon