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Mega-DVDs -- 100GB Apiece 167

Posted by timothy from the shrinking-it-all-again dept.
saitouhajime writes: "Matsushita is reporting that they've developed a method of storing 100 Gigabytes onto a standard sized dvd. Articles can be found here(1) and here(2)." 100GB on a disk would be a nice way to store backups -- but since the DVD consortium hasn't made any promises, this format may remain just a demo technology forever.
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Mega-DVDs -- 100GB Apiece More

Mega-DVDs -- 100GB Apiece

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  • Winzip? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They discovered Winzip?
    • There's no way a zip archive could achieve this kind of compression. It's a bad compression utility. .tar.gz is much better at saving space. Even better than that is .tar.bz2. Still, none of these will compress to that extent.

      • F:\100Gb>dir

        Volume in drive F is Shite
        Serial number is B004:4C87

        Directory of F:\100Gb\*

        10/26/2001 22:49 2,147,483,648 2Gb.zeros.0
        10/26/2001 22:49 2,147,483,648 2Gb.zeros.1
        {etc. to avoid postercompression lameness filter}
        10/26/2001 22:49 2,147,483,648 2Gb.zeros.48
        10/26/2001 22:49 2,147,483,648 2Gb.zeros.49
        10/27/2001 10:36 516,452 100gb.zeros.zip

        51 File(s) 107,374,698,852 bytes
        2 Dir(s) 461,238,272 bytes free

        100Gb on a floppy - thanks to WinZip!
      • tar is not a compression utility. It is for archiving many files into one (traditionally to be placed onto tape). Perhaps you meant to say gzip (.gz) and bzip2 (.bz2)

        And frankly, PKZIP is not bad- maybe not be the greatest, but for it does what it does well. Without it, it would have been a long time before we saw good, affordable compression on PCs..

    • I heard that there actually are methods of lossless video compression that achieve better rates than MPEG 4, that some big names in the industry are patenting right now. I really know none of the details, but does anybody here? Anyone with an NDA want to post anonymously?
      • I guess if those methods exist, why don't they modify them to use lossy encryption too? I mean, a bit of loss doesn't hurt the vast majority of viewer and their compressin rate whould be even better.
    • This is ridiculous. So everytime an invention that doubles/triples the storage space is a discovery of WinZip?
      • Perhaps it was a joke? I mean, its funny, and its been moderated as `funny`. Of course, i`m only guessing. Certainly it didnt contain `this is a joke` as part of the text. But i`ve noticed several jokes like that. Its almost as if you`re supposed to work that out for yourself...
  • I think it's about time that a company has a long-term, high-capacity data solution that is suitable for the average home user. Tapes are still much too much. The technology is there, and given the premise that it is somewhat affordable, the demand will certainly be there, especially with the increase in TV-top gizmos for recording TV or video digitally.

    I really hope this, or something like it, does actually come to fruition in the near future. (My mp3 collection is screaming for it, too! 8)

    • What's wrong with the Snap Server [snapserver.com]-type stuff? The usually plug into a hub and have a fairly quick boot/setup time, multiple RAID options, 10/100/1000 network support, SNMP, all the essentials.

      Take the Snap Server 12000 [snapserver.com], for instance: "Nearly 1TB for Less Than $15,000". That's right, 960GB for under $14,999! That should provide enough storage for even the horniest of geeks (for a few weeks at least).

      Anyone have any experience with these things? Good? Bad?

    • I think it's about time that a company has a long-term, high-capacity data solution that is suitable for the average home user. Tapes are still much too much.

      Tapes are also by no stretch of the imagination, "long-term".

  • 100GB is only for double sided (Score:3, Informative)

    by dopplex ( 242543 ) on Saturday October 27, 2001 @12:14AM (#2486634)
    The article says that to achieve 100GB, the disc has to be double sided.. So presumably most of the media we see will actually only have a 50GB capacity.
    • You know my school still uses laserdiscs? that's a funny medium. The discs are something like 20 in across. Almost all of them are doublesided. People don't mind flipping a disk over if it holds so much data. It's actually easier than keeping track of two discs...

      Also, I think that some double-sided dvds are already in existence.


      • Until DVDs hit, laserdiscs ruled! They gave near DVD quality, and delivered it many years earlier. Flipping them was a pain, but a good player would flip the read head so you didn't have to get up. (on a long movie you still might have to put a second platter in though.)

        I still have a stack of them, and I am overcome by a fit of nostalgia whenever I pick one up. They have this weird smell... something about the glue or the plastic... very distinctive, in the same way that a PCB smell is. I also have some programming that will probably never show up on DVD, and since my 12-year old LD player just bit the dust I am not sure what to do about that.

        Mmm, analog spinning video media! Those were the days. But when DVDs came along and you could get them for $5-10 each (very common in the early days when there were all kinds of special deals) I bought in and never looked back.
      • Also, I think that some double-sided dvds are already in existence.

        You are correct. Many DVD's have the letterboxed film on one side and the Pan-n-Scan on the other. Quite nifty, if you ask me.

      • Also, I think that some double-sided dvds are already in existence

        I have Terminator 2 on DVD. One side 16:9, the other side is 4:3.
      • Yes. There are doublesided DVDs in existence, I have some... However, these are the exception rather than the rule. For commercial products - ie software we may buy on this type of media - I doubt that the marketers will let them use both sides of the disc, and lose the opportunity to put their pretty logo on it.

        Additionally, having it double sided leaves precious little room to label the media, so I'd expect most of the blank media available to be single sided as well. I'm sure there will be double sided available, but in practice I think that most of what is used would be single sided.
      • That is indeed true. Most double sided DVD's that I have seen/own are 4:3 and Widescreen versions on one DVD disc. Turn them over to see the other format. In this case, it is MUCH more convenient, as although both types of video are nice, you really wouldn't want two copies. More importantly, the DVD retailers don't want you with 2 discs, one to give to friends.
    • The article says that to achieve 100GB, the disc has to be double sided.. So presumably most of the media we see will actually only have a 50GB capacity.

      ONLY 50GB????!!! Ohwell... i guess windows 2010 (a diskspace odyssey) just wont fit on that then...
    • Okay,
      So do what we did for floppies ages ago. Add a second read head (laser / mirror etc...) to read from the other side without flipping the disk. Yes, it will add a bit to the cost of the drive, but in the long run, will be considered normal.

      Stephen L. Palmer
  • Matsushita develops 100-Gbyte optical video disk
    By Yoshiko Hara
    EE Times(10/26/01, 9:38 a.m. EST)

    TOKYO -- A dual-layer rewritable optical-disk technology has been developed by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., one of the main technology leaders in digital video disks. Using a set of violet lasers with a numerical aperture (NA) of 0.85 and a 0.1-mm cover layer, the company has developed disks that have a capacity of 50 Gbytes per side, which allows the recording of more than four hours of high-definition programs, two hours per side.

    Matsushita plans to present the technology Friday (Oct. 19) at the International Symposium on Optical Memory in Taipei, Taiwan.

    Matsushita's announcement follows Hitachi Ltd.'s recent development of an optical pickup that aims for a capacity of 100 Gbytes per disk. Hitachi used the same numerical-aperture and cover-layer parameters as Matsushita.

    This set of parameters was first used in the DVR-Blue disk recording system developed by Sony Corp. and Philips Electronics and demonstrated at last year's Ceatec, the largest electronics show in Japan. The departure from the current DVD format, however, was looked on with disapproval.

    "It's not desirable for the industry to have split formats. The basic disk structure is almost the same as the one that Sony proposed. When a disk has a single layer, it would be quite similar to Sony's. We hope such a resemblance will work favorably to establish a unified format," said Shin-ichi Tanaka, director of Matsushita's optical-disk systems development center.

    The numerical aperture controls these parameters, said engineers. To develop a high-capacity disk using a current optical system and a laser with a wavelength of about 400 nanometers, a large NA is essential, and 0.85 is within practical reach.

    Desirable standard

    "Even if we stick to the same 0.6-mm-thick-per-side disk as DVD disks, it does not guarantee compatibility with DVDs. If a blue or violet laser is used, it becomes difficult to read current DVD dual-layer disks anyway," said Tanaka. "Of course, compatibility with the present DVD format is important, and we will guarantee the compatibility. But for the next-generation disk system, it should be desirable to standardize its format based on an NA of 0.85 and a 0.1-mm-thick cover layer."

    The DVD Forum, which works on standards, has not made a decision about the next-generation disk system. "Lasers are not available from Nichia Corp. unless we enter into a nondisclosure agreement," said an engineer close to the DVD Forum. "We cannot discuss the format openly with a nondisclosure contract. In fact, light source availability is a hindrance to standardization work."

    The 120-mm-diameter optical disk is a phase-change disk with dual recording layers on one side. With each layer having a 25-Gbyte rewrite capacity, a single-sided disk would have a 50-Gbyte capacity, and a doubled-sided disk would hold 100 Gbytes.

    The layer closer to the laser is half-transparent. Matsushita engineers made the recording layer 6-nm thick to increase the transparency to 50 percent. Conventional dual-layer disks have a transparency of about 16 percent.

    The second layer, which is about 30 microns away from the first, is 12-nm thick and has increased sensitivity. A backing layer made of aluminum works as a heat sink. The distance between the recording layer and the aluminum layer is extended to maintain heat for writing and reading operations.

    Matsushita demonstrated the disk system using its home-grown second-harmonic-generation laser, which emits a 410-nm wavelength and outputs 30 milliwatts. The disk can record and play back at a data transfer rate of 33 Mbits/second, three times faster than conventional DVDs.

    When recorded at 25 Mbits/s, the disk can store more than four hours of high-definition moving pictures.

    The dual-layer disk is made with a process similar to the one used for current DVD two-layer disks. When both sides have two layers, the disk will have four recording layers totaling 100 Gbytes.

    • Matsushita Unveils New Mega-DVD New Disks Store 10X as Much Content
      October 24, 2001

      Video Business reports that Japanese electronics giant Matsushita has introduced a DVD disk that can store more than 50GB (gigabytes) of information on each side. Disks available today typically store about 5GB per side. The new disks should prove to be increasingly important in the era of high definition TV, since they will be able to store over four hours of high-def TV on each side. The disks should eventually also provide enormous potential for use in creation of collections of TV series that were not shot in high definition, since they can hold ten times as much as current disks, raising the prospect of a single DVD holding four or five seasons of Ranma ½ or some other long-running series. While full exploitation of this new disk technology is clearly well in the future, the possibilities are mind-boggling. Unfortunately we may have to wait until the slow-developing market for high definition television finally takes off before this new disk technology is fully implemented, but early adoption for computer applications may hasten the day when a two-disk Seinfeld collection can encompass the entire series.

  • Check here [slashdot.org] and the old article here [matsushita.co.jp]. But now we have a little bit more detail...

  • I've seen a million "Store 100 gigs on cheap media!" type stories on here, and they ALL scream "Vaporware!". Does anyone remember the "2 terabyte clear CD" thing? IIRC I think it was predicted that we'd all be using them by 2001. Well, I'm still using plain old CDs...

    Is this just a gimmick by companies to get funding or something?

  • From the second link [eetimes.com] "A dual-layer rewritable optical-disk technology," and "disks that have a capacity of 50 Gbytes per side , which allows the recording of more than four hours of high-definition programs, two hours per side ." my emphasis.

    Read 50 gigs or watch 2 hours of a movie in HDTV then physically flip the disk unless the reader/writer has dual lasers.

  • I find this all interesting, even if it's 50megs per side. How easy it would be to back-up your data on a daily basis.

    That's were this product could be used.

    -onepoint

  • Archive, not backups (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tsk ( 2863 ) on Saturday October 27, 2001 @12:18AM (#2486649) Homepage Journal
    For backups at least ina profesionnal environement you need more speed. writting DVD is slow compared to technologies like LTO, which stores up to 200 Gig on a casette.Archives which you write and then store somewhere in a safe palce because You personaly don't need the data, are better stored on worm devices like DVD's. French quality commette recommends Worm device writting for archives you need to keep for the IRS.
  • So this is basically a dual-layered DVD. What about the multilayered 140GB CDs [slashdot.org]?

    Any ideas as to what's better? More data density (DVDs) or more layers (CDs)? I would guess that the CDs would allow a faster read speed, but that's just a plain old guess.
  • Damn! the first link, here(1) [icv2.com] tries to set 56 friggin cookies! That's just obscene!

    • ...then I'm not going to click it :)


      Why do developers do this? Sheesh. The way to PROPERLY do cookies is to send ONE. The contents of that ONE cookie will be a HASH, which is your session ID. Then the CGI should get the actual data for that session ID from the server itself (and store it there too). Sheesh.

  • YASCIA (Score:1, Redundant)

    by istartedi ( 132515 )

    Yet Another Storage Capacity Increase Article. or... News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters with a de-emphasis on "news", which this is surely not. Too bad The Onion doesn't take submissions. "Researchers conduct Research" would be a great title.

    • The Onion has great writers; submissions wouldn't work.

      I mean, comic genius: "Doctors find new way to prolong meanless existance"
  • According to this [google.com], those 2 hours of hidef TV are uncompressed. Compressed is probably a helluva lot more.
    • Having feature films in an uncompressed high-definition home format would be great, but I'm sure those fuckers who work in DVD production will still ruin it by adding too much edge enhancement.

  • Violet Laser != DVD (Score:4, Informative)

    by Diesel Dave ( 95048 ) on Saturday October 27, 2001 @12:37AM (#2486689)
    First: It a sad thing *ANY* article on slashdot is consumed by dog shit posts. 20 comments already attached to this article and not a damn one has anything to say.

    That said the real story here is the wavelength change. Normal CD's are red lasers. DVD's are blue. This thing is VIOLET. The shorter the light wave, the more dense the data can be. So this is big news because it is a new level of technology, not a progression of one of the current technologies. (Without question some form of this will be adopted)

    This means that some of the recent tricks (multi-layers) will probably be applicable to this to yield a VERY high amount of storage, maybe 100-200GB per side. That is of course if they don't come out with an ULTRA-VIOLET laser based system first. (Uhmm does an ultra-violet laser even exist yet??)

    OK guys we're at 50GB per platter now. Give me random I/O of 4ms, and I'll chuck my magnetic HD's out of the window.
    • Yes, UV lasers do exist.
    • (Uhmm does an ultra-violet laser even exist yet??)

      The really cool lasers are the X-ray and Gamma ray lasers. The nuclear pumped ones :)

      If you used them for a DVD sytem they'd have awsome storage density. The drawback is that they'd be write once or read once disks (and I do mean OR).
    • I've always thought about how cool it would be to make OSes on DVDs. It'd be great to replace our hard drives with something like this. Skiners could reach new hieghts with beutiful OSes that would make Mac OS X Aqua cry with shame. I've often wanted to see new developments with ways we intereact with our computers. Maybe a format like this open up a doorway in that direction.

      If it was rewritable, it'd add a whole new dimension to chain letters.

      Unfortunatley with storage sizes this large, we can expect to see some opposistion to the rewritable factor from our friendly neighborhood big-wigs. :(

      I hope it breaks though.
      • Current Hard Drive technology can store even more than this, so it's not really a matter of how many beautiful icons I can fit onto my screen. The problem is avoiding bloat so that I don't need 100 GB of RAM to go along with it.
    • Normal CD's are red lasers. DVD's are blue. This thing is VIOLET.

      Nah, normal CDs use an infrared laser, while DVDs use a red one.

      A blue/violet laser small enough to be used in a DVD drive is pretty cool though; anyone know more about these things? I assume they use one of those frequency doubling crystals [castech.com] like the green laser pointers?

    • Yes, UV lasers do exist, but they're not the nicest of things. Firstly, like IR lasers, they're invisible, but unlike IR lasers, they tend to scatter and diffract off surfaces very easily, due to the high wavelength. So you never really know where they are.

      Secondly, UV lasers have a nasty habit of causing cancer on contact with the beam. Granted, only a very low power beam will be required to read the media, but I bet the average consumer will be thrilled with having invisible carcinogenic radiation inside their computer.

      On a vaguely related note, due to the ionising nature of UV lasers, they're considering making tasers out of them. I spose the thinking is, if they don't incapacitate the criminals, they'll give them cancer. I see a great case for lawsuits here....

      --Russ
      • "I bet the average consumer will be thrilled with having invisible carcinogenic radiation inside their computer."

        Sort of like people are thrilled to have radioactive material in their household smoke detector. The cancer causing nature of UV light isn't exactly what what you say it is... I can't believe you got moderated up. Were you joking, to see who'd believe you?
        • Damn... you saw right through my cunning plan...

          Really, the radiation for these discs (at least the readers) shouldn't really be a problem, although the drives may need to be designed better to prevent the escape of any radiation. The big problem is that current CD-R and RW *writers* use higher-power lasers to heat up the substrate and write or erase. The problem is, that a UV laser won't heat the substrate up nearly as much as an IR one would, but I'm sure they've found a way out of that

          Although, I bet only around 25% of people know they have ionising radiation inside their smoke detectors...
      • Oh come on. I hate to break this to you, but
        when the laser in your DVD player is on, its IN A CLOSED BOX. How exactly do you think you're going to get exposed to UV radiation from the laser in your DVD player?
        As for the taser thing - yes, UV exposure in large doses over a long period of time can cause skin cancer. The second or so nessecary to create a current path and shock someone is NOT going to be a big deal here. Every go outside on a sunny day?(I know this is slashdot so there'll be a least a few no's here) Congrats, you're bathed in UV radiation. Better get around to suing whoever owns that big "sun" thing.
    • That is of course if they don't come out with an ULTRA-VIOLET laser based system first. (Uhmm does an ultra-violet laser even exist yet??)

      I think so, but I haven't actually seen it yet.
    • You may find this pointer to the Sony ultraviolet laser useful.

      http://www.sonypt.co.jp/en/products/p_11.html

      Yes, smaller units are in the works. Uncompressed high-definition video recorders might be one application.

  • So then everyone will need to buy new dvd players that can play these new dvd's? Correct me if I'm wrong. Might as well go for an all new data storage format altogether like FMD discs.

    The new dvds may hold more space, but its too late for this new technology to become a standard in households.

    Joe Consumer needs to believe that the dvd player he buys today will not be completely useless a few months from now.

    Same goes for dvd publishers too. Even if you could fit every episode of The Simpsons onto 2 or 3 discs, you wouldn't publish the set until there were enough consumers out there with the dvd players that could play them.
    • I'm not well informed about DVDs but they're still discs in the same way a CD a disc (yeah there's probably nano-reflective doodads and multi-protective widgets, but it's similar, correct?), the only *major* difference is that they use the blue laser with the shorter wave length to be able to make the data denser, if anyone was going to markey this new violet-laser disc technology they wouldn't call them "violet-laser DVDs", at least I'd hope not. They'd hopefully give them a new flashy name so that 'Joe Consumer' won't say "wtf, why can't my DVD player from '97 play there new DVDs?".

      Besides, those people who say that should be drug out into the street and shot, it's the only way we can evolve as a people, weed out the incompetent.

  • {Name} from {site} wrote in to tell us about a new [disc/disk/cd/drive/toaster] that can hold [10/100/1000/5000] [MB/GB/TB/PB] and is backward compatible with [nothing/5 1/2" floppy drives/iomega clik!]. The new format is only [.25/1/5] [mm/inches/yards] across and is resistant to [scratches/heat/proton decay]. Unfortunately, due to [patents/liscensing issues/censorship] from [MS/USPS/IBM/Disney] this will probably never get off the ground. Guess I'll stick to using [DVD-RAM/punch cards/LS-120] for now.
  • If the demand is there, which it certainly will be, Matsushita can simply release this technology without the official DVD logo if the consortium balks. Barring any manufacturing difficulties, this will probably start showing up in consumer markets before too long.
  • This is apparently an optical multiple read/write format, not just a SDVD-R type of thing... And there's several companies who have developed almost the same thing, which means that a standard might be decided much quicker than before...

    Not to mention that this should also cause DVD-R drives to finally come down within reach!
  • Warning: I am making the possibly misguided assumption that this new technology is based on "blue laser" wavelengths".

    I have long since wondered when blue laser technology would fit into the "grand scheme" of data storage needs. Standards serve both to implemement existing technology as soon as possible in order to acquire more investment dollars, and in order to ensure compatibility with existing and established markets and products. However, standards also serve to hamper technological advancements. Just look at the X86 architecture (or whatever it's called). On the other hand, standards also ensure compatibility with a wide variety of manufacturers and products. They generally make our lives much easier.
    I believe that in order to push this new technology, and also to provide compatibility with the existing infrastructure, early developers of this technology will have to make some compromises. These compromises will be most notable in the actual user-cost. My reasoning being, is that they will have to make their product with two different lasers. One that uses the blue wavelength, and one that uses the old DVD standard. This will increase the cost untill they can figure a way to use a single laser to do both, like Sony has done with their Playstation2. I think this format has the potential to do very well, except for the standards issue. If the general public can accept the early high costs of this technology and view it as a true leap, it will quickly become cheaper and more usefull. If not, then it will die a quick death, and be thrown towards a niche category like perhaps the Minidisc is in America. Standards are again, both a blessing and a curse.
    • As usual, I could be (and probably am) wrong, but I thought current generation DVD uses a blue laser, whereas this new techology uses a violet laser (which has a shorter wavelength, IIRC, thereby giving you more data density)...
      • DVD uses a 680+/- nanometer beam, while CD-ROM uses one around 740-/+. Since CD-ROM lasers are just outside the visible spectrum, then DVD beams can't be far off of the red part of the spectrum. They are also more visble to the eye. That being said, I still don't know if this new technology uses blue or violet.

  • The big difference (Score:3, Insightful)

    by UserChrisCanter4 ( 464072 ) on Saturday October 27, 2001 @01:03AM (#2486733)
    For those of you not in the know, Matsushita is the Japanese parent company of Panasonic.

    With all of the other fanciful storage media (FMD, anyone), we're talking about tiny start-up companies that are throwing (usually) empty promises out about their newest gizmo because, let's face it, they'll do anything to jack the stock price a little.

    I would feel safe in making a bet that we would never, ever see widespread use of FMD (maybe something similar, but probably never FMD). I just don't think a company that small would have the financial resources to tangle with the big boys on something as big as a common media storage format.

    Meanwhile I sit here looking at my Panasonic television. I saw their Home theater DVD-R unit at the electronics store today for $1K. Call me crazy, but I just find this claim a little more legit than most.
    • With all of the other fanciful storage media (FMD, anyone), we're talking about tiny start-up companies that are throwing (usually) empty promises out about their newest gizmo because, let's face it, they'll do anything to jack the stock price a little.

      Feeling bitter, are you? Which of these vaporous companies did you invest half your life savings in?

      The way I figure, someone is out there working on the true next generation of optical storage. Whoever it is, they're not likely to be shy about it, so I doubt it's being kept secret in some big company's lab; it's someone we can find out about. Of those I've seen, my money is still on Constellation 3D [c-3d.net] and their Fluorescent Multilayer Disc (FMD). Why?

      • They already have the technology running in a corporate lab and are pushing toward productization. This already sets them apart from the companies whose technology only exists on PowerPoint slides.
      • They've shown a willingness to partner with the big companies, instead of competing with them, and as a result have signed agreements with companies such as Plasmon and WAMO (Warner Advanced Media, a division of AOL Time Warner). For their parts, the big companies have gotten pretty comfortable with outsourcing R&D like this, and they don't want to kill the goose with the golden eggs.

      I don't know whether C3D will succeed long-term or not. Even when you already have the technology in the lab you can still hit stumbling blocks making it ready for the big bad real world (Castlewood is an example of this, in the same industry sector). However, I think it's a little unfair to lump them in with companies that lack either real technology or business sense. They still have a real - though perhaps still small - chance of hitting it big.

      Disclaimer: I own a couple thousand shares of C3D stock, but it's not like I work for them or anything. It's not even a significant amount of money for me (the stock is under a buck). I bought the stock because I respect the company, not the other way around.

  • Now I'll finally have somewhere to store all my illegal DVD rips.

    <legaldisclaimerforMPAAfuckheads>Legion does not have any illegal DVD rips.lt;/legaldisclaimerforMPAAfuckheads>

    -Legion

  • HD DVDs? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by gouldtj ( 21635 )
    Maybe I'm just being an optimist, but it would be really cool to use this for High Definition DVDs. Heck, it wouldn't even cost more (besides the drive mechanics) because by that time most TVs will have to accept HD over the air, so over the firewire is cheap!
  • As the wise man once said:

    I'll Believe It When I See It.

  • Get a IDE RAID array, 4 100 GB IDE hard disks, and you got yourself 300 GB of space at ultra-fast speeds. :)

    Then again, you lose the portability but the costs are probably much lower right now(a 100 GB IDE drive goes for about $300-$400 CDN now and a cheap RAID card could cost you $70-$150 CDN) and you probably have less chance for an error.

    In any case, a 100 GB disc is pretty cool. :)
  • This is a huge understatement. The adjective Mega is a pretty lame way to describe an item that holds 100 Giga bytes.

    A real marketing manager would describe this product as a "Terabyte-DVD" *

    * CAPACITY DISCLAIMER: Holds up to 1 terabyte assuming all files are compressed 10:1 with a third-party compression utility. Compression utility not included. Your actual compressed capacity may vary. Not all files are compressable.

    • Maybe they mean "Mega-DVD" to connote that it has the capacity of a million conventional DVDs. That's more along the lines of the blue-sky exaggeration which is the stock in trade of marketing managers.

      A real marketing manager would describe this product as a "Terabyte-DVD"

      Try maybe a "Terabit DVD." That way you could even have ads with Elmer Fudd in hot pursuit of "de wabbit."

  • Just what we need, another standard for Lucas to throw Star Wars onto!
  • 100 GB, eh? Imagine the amount of pr0n -- um, sorry, I meant copyright MP3s -- oh no, my mistake, I'll start again.

    Imagine the amount of 'Redundant' Slashdot messages that you could fit on there!
  • And yet there are even better [sysopt.com], yet not bigger (-5GB) storage devices out there.

    "Here's why Constellation 3D succeeded: instead of using a reflective CD surface, FMD media appears totally transparent to the human eye. That's because each layer is coated with a fluorescent dye instead of a reflective coating" And to quote further, "the cost to manufacture a 15 layer FMD disc is only 76 cents." Sounds better to me.

  • And it will never be available.
  • When i first heard about the DVD coming out with 17 GB i still dreamed of having a 2 GB hard-drive, but now i cant even afford to buy a 4-9 GB DVD-R drive, and i already have a 15 GB HD, and thats not even large for today's standards.

    If they would release this new Giga-DVD RIGHT NOW it may be somewhat cool, but assuming its gonna take at least 1-2 years until we see anything of it on the market, the HDs will already have evolved to 200 or 400 GB i guess. and then i wouldnt be very amazed by it anymore, especially if they first chose to only give us the 25 GB version ...

    Alright, It would totally own CDr or DVDr, but it wouldnt be sufficient anymore.

    how do you think about this?

    .
  • MPAA Meeting: Great, so now we have to give those ungrateful consumers higher quality video with less compression... no screw that, lets just put 40GBs of copy-protection systems on.

    I would actually _pay_ (yes, me actually pay real money) for DVDs that used all this capacity to give me extra high-quality data with less compression. Instead of downloading crappy DivX'ed versions. Seeing DVDs now, i don't understand how anyone could be fooled into thinking they are high-quality, the artifacts are terrible
    • Seeing DVDs now, i don't understand how anyone could be fooled into thinking they are high-quality, the artifacts are terrible.

      Simple... the only comparisons are to broadcast or cable TV, VHS (ugh), or digital satellite/cable (more compression than DVD). A good DVD blows away any other source that's available to consumers now. Well, HD looks better, but it's not really all that available yet.

      What sucks is that with a 100GB rewritable format available, the MPAA and such are now going to try to slow the HDTV rollout even more, saying that now their content won't be safe from piracy. Bastards.
  • we could all watch films now with commentaries by

    the lighting supervisor
    the electrician
    camera grip
    gaffer
    make-up artist
    catering crew
    studio security ( think of the stories s/he could tell )
    extras - old man a bus stop.


    I can't wait.
  • All of Debian Linux finally fits on one disk ;-)
  • This happens all the time. Some company creates a new format that can store more 'stuff' in less space, but only a very select few ever reach the general market. It's because DVD itself has only just been taken up by the general public, and that took long enough. If Matsushita release another format what happens to the millions who already bought their non-compatible DVD players? They're not going to be too happy.

    The industry can only handle a major change in storage once every 10 or so years. First we moved from floppy discs to CDs, and now from CDs to DVDs. All that happens is that denser storage formats are researched and researched, and then when the old formats have been stretched to breaking points (see Windows 95, released on 20 or so floppy discs), then there is a big push and we all move over to the technology that has the right balance of advancement and maturity at the time - CD and DVD were just the lucky ones who were around at the right time.

    So this research is useful, but 100GB discs probably won't ever reach the mainstream. The next 'step up' that really gets mass support will probably be in the multi-terabyte range.
  • Interior, Microsoft Corporate Headquarters
    Flunky1: Sir, we are having a problem - customers are rejecting the new builds of WindowsAYBABTU because it requires twenty CD-ROMS and a five-day download over a cable modem. What shall we do?
    Bill: What? My plans for world dominion are threatened? You know the litany:
    Bill and Flunky1 together, in a sing-song voice: "Ease of use is king"
    Bill: No matter, I have minions working on this very problem.
    Bill turns to a large monitor on the wall, withdraws a remote control from his pocket, and presses a button on it.
    Man on screen: Matsushita Research...
  • I think that Matsushita's announcement of the 100 GB 5.25" optical disk designed close to the Sony-Phillips proposal could mean an agreement by this super-capacity DVD could come may be the fall of 2002.

    Remember, today's DiVX format compression can store something like a 2-hour movie with near-DVD quality on a single 650 MB CD-R disc. Imagine applying next-generation video compression (now under development by the MPEG standards groups) to the new disc format; we could see 1080i HDTV movies that won't require 50 GB's of storage space per disc side--imagine storing the entire Godfather] trilogy in 1080i wide screen format on a single-sided disc including all the extras.

    I can also guess that a recordable version of this new disk could store around 85 GB in a disk format similar to the old optical disk formats from the early 1990's. With today's improved optical disk recording technologies and the availability of better I/O interfaces such as SCSI Ultra-Wide 160/320 and Fibre Channel, imagine a whole bank of these new optical disk drives backing up large HD arrays in a small fraction of the time that tape backup systems require.
  • I've been an avid /. reader and poster for about the past year and have read quite a few stories that have blown my mind away (better than Popular Science back when I was a kid). However, it would seem that /.'s archives hold no record of a small company in New York known as Constellation 3d [c-3d.net] . They have had this technolgy at least the theoretical technology for about five years now.

    Rather than using coherent light like all regular CD and DVD drives do with their little class I lasers, they use incoherent light (finally we're incoherent...need more coffee...I digress) to read multiple layers (up to 20 I believe) and are able to store and access 100 GB of information.

    Not to downplay Matty's new technology but this has been around for a while, just not available for regular drives, but then again five years ago DVD and CDRW drives weren't all that common in most PCs.

    If anything this brings to light that perhaps these two companies could work together on this project to create the better DVD format...of course that would mean a ton of firmware updates, but hey, such is the way of being a binary geek. :-)
  • While it has been mentioned that this possibly could be vaporware (or vapourware, if you prefer) the trade off for such a large capacity is usually speed.

    I've read thru all the post and that point is usually missed.
    Take CD's for instance, when they could be described as "languishing" at 650/700M for a long time, DVD-RAM (commonly called opticals or MO drives/disks at the time) carried 4 to 5.2G of storage. The trade off has always been speed.

    CD's were hitting the 20X speeds while MO/Opticals were "languishing" at a max of 4X speed, or there abouts.

    Now tape drives are another story. I've recently gone thru the hell of restoring from a DLT7K in a dell powervault...the restore took 7+ hours for 6 or so files that did not total a few dozen Mb.

    This is unacceptable for data archival/retrieval, IMO.

    To top it all off, it took 3 days and many calls to *ell's techs to get *nowhere*.

    Now, if a "jukebox" could be made with 16 drives of 100G capacity via Gb ethernet, fiber, or connect to an UW scsi that would kick arse.
    IF searching took less than an hour over that *entire* unit...it would be a godsend.

    Think about 1.6Tb of storage! Combine that with what pinnacle micro did with their jukeboxes...used a hard drive to cache directory info and frequently accessed files to take care of some of the speed issues involved.

    So much data, so little time and capacity to hold it all.

    I hope these 100G disks/drives do come to fruition, because that will mean at the very least that the 5.2G disks will finally drop in price. :)

    (my sig is a voice in the wilderness to all metamoderators)
    • Compare apples to apples, please. An "X" for a CD-ROM drive is 150KB/s. I don't know what an "X" is for a DVD drive, but I'm pretty darned certain that it's more then that, because my old "2X" DVD drive could play DVD's... and I *know* DVDs need more then 300KB/s to play correctly.

      Why not re-write your post, using KB/s instead of "X"?

      In fact, increasing the density of a drive often increases the possible speed of the drive. Sometimes (sometimes!) the constaining factor on a drive is how fast the media can be spun. Modern CD drives are pretty much at this limit; you just can't spin CD's reliably at "100X", even if you had the theoretical ability to read the data that fast. (Yes, I know no CD player comes even close to that speed; that's my point.) But if you spin the DVD at the same max speed a CD drive can spin a CD, then the DVD drive will be able to transfer significantly more quickly.

      Rather then a "tradeoff" between speed and capacity, you usually get the opposite: Both coming at once. Esp. in the mature version of a technology, which is where we are now with CD players and either are, or will be within months, for DVD players.
      • Ah, true, very true....you make an excellent point.

        If I may, I'd like to point out that you are very correct, however, for some reason a 300k/s thru-put on a cd rom != optical drives.

        Some times what it comes down to is access time and size of the media. access time increases as the size increases (god, that almost sounds dirty).

        Further honing down: the "superdrive" as it is called does dvd-r's at what? 2X? for a dvd-r, but does cdr's at ~8 or 10X...errr...the light just dawned...I seem to be further proving you correct. :| (snort)

        But I was pointing at the trade offs not with r/rw media, but the trade off between capacity/speed of cdr vs optical.
        As this article is pointing out, the possibility of "huge" optical drives (dvd-rams?) is 'do-able' but the access/seek/Xfer rate suffers.

        I suppose if the cd/dvd ratings of 4X were equal in thruput, we'd still see the dvd tech "falling behind" most likely from the overhead.

        Any thoughts?

        (Dang, I wish I had mod points, but alas I've only been give that privelage *once*...sigh)
      • A single speed DVD drive is about 8-10x CD speeds.

        The rate of data transmission varies on all drives greater than approx 12x CD as they use constant angular velocity (ie., the drives dont spin up and down as the 8x CD roms did) rather than constant linear velocity - it depends on how close to the centre data is. Stuff near the edge reads fastest as there is more data stored around the edge than at the center, but the spin speed is the same. Constant linear velocity was originally used because the first generation CD's required it to play music - you expect your sound to come out at the same tempo/pitch, and not start slow and end fast. (The data is stored from the centre out to reduce the risk of damage from the edge).

        The biggest limitation in most drive use on computers is that the seek time is _much_ slower than the read speeds. Typically a few hundere milliseconds, and I don't think there is much difference between DVD and CD in this regard.

        Hope that helps.

        Michael
  • Surely 100GB of RAM will still be the cheaper way to go.

  • wow! (Score:1)

    by wroot ( 264810 )
    If each neuron of human brain carried 1 bite of info, you could store the whole thing on one of these DVDs uncompressed!

    Wroot

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