09-29-2004, 02:00 PM
|
|
Swami
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 4,303
|
|
Super Size Storage - (He Just Can't Get Enough)
"Now 32 petabytes - that really is a serious amount of storage. A 32 "pet" media player could hold about seven billion MP3s or roughly 50 million movies - surely that would be enough for even the most avid cinema buff or music nut? If I've learned anything from Depeche Mode and my old 64Mb player, it's that 32 petabytes probably won't be enough. So it must only be a matter of time before the exabyte, zettabyte, yottabyte and finally the brontobyte media player appears on the market. A brontobyte is million million petabytes, enough to store everything that's ever been filmed, taped, photographed, recorded, written, spoken, and probably even thought. Still, it would probably be wise to wait for the 10 bront model, just to be on the safe side."
The BBC has just put up an amusing, but thought provoking article about digital storage space. The columnist tells a tale that most of us will recognise. When he started out with his 64Mb MP3 player he was happy with the capacity, and now the sky is the limit. Sound familiar? He talks about how the current generation 40Gb MP3 players should be large enough for most folk's music collection and speculates about the emerging generation of 'personal media' players and their insatiable demand for storage capacity to fit in multiple films. Maybe it's just me, but I don't have a burning desire to carry around 50 films me all the time. If you do a lot of long distance travelling I can see how that would be useful, but how many folks will want regular mobile access to that that number of films?
Do you reckon that the BBC columnist is correct in that demand of mobile personal storage will inexorably continue to rise? I have 35Gb+ of music and 30Gb+ of data (though that's increasing fast with an 8Mp camera to add more photos). As I don't make digital videos or collect films, I just don't see my storage needs making a step change. Sure, it adds up, but have you seen the prices of 250Gb hard disks recently? Heck, at those prices I'll have two and do RAID 1 disk mirroring for peace of mind. Are potential disk capacities rising faster than our abilities to fill them, or are we chasing rainbows, never able to connect? At what point does the increase in storage space catch up with our wants, let alone our needs? Thoughts?
|
| |
|
|
|
09-29-2004, 02:50 PM
|
|
Pupil
Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 42
|
|
My opinion is that the portable storage will be the focus; how much can we bring with us. Its more of a "peace of mind" thing. Who really needs to have 40Gb of music and and ultimately a movie collection in their pocket? (W?BIC - this is from guy who runs all that crap in his car from a PPC).
Having said that, wireless (or even wired) access to the media will certainly be a factor to potentially offset the need for on-line storage capacity.
"Potentially", because I suspect, since no one is in charge and that these are basically two competing technologies (telecom and on-line storage), that both will increase in capacity to rediculous proportions while the costs decrease.
It's like the first time I got a 10 gig drive for my PC - I started a campaign to snake all the internet porn I could find, "just in case". After realizing that it was all gonna stay there anyway, and that there is slightly more than 10 gig of porn in the world... I came to accept that I really didn't need that much space. Of course, now there is music - but it is eventually going to lead to the same conclusions.
Anyway - we're always gonna want more. More and Faster.
|
| |
|
|
|
09-29-2004, 02:50 PM
|
|
Philosopher
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 574
|
|
I've thought about this a great deal. On my Multimedia-server i have about 250Gb of movies in high-quality AVI. Reducing the size to PocketPC-format, it would become about 60 Gb. Add a 8 Gb of MP3's, and i have all my movies and music with me. Add another 10 Gb and i have all my personal photo's with me.
Why? Because i do not want to be bothered with the notion that i have to decide in advance what i want to see/hear. When i'm traveling i want to decide at THAT moment what i want to see. That could be radically different from what i anticipated that morning. When i had a rough meeting, i want to see blood splashing on my screen. When i had a relaxing day, i want a good thriller to tease my brain. But i can not predict what my mood i will be when i want to see a movie. I want to decide when i'm on the move what i'm going to see, and if the movie bores me halfway i want to take another movie.
Having to decide what to take with me is ridiculous with that in mind. I want all my music with me and all my movies with me to decide what i'm going to listen/see on the move. IMHO, synchronizing music every day is a worthless excersise in order to keep people busy......
Jaap
|
| |
|
|
|
09-29-2004, 03:27 PM
|
|
Intellectual
Join Date: Sep 2003
Posts: 187
|
|
And that's not all,
New compressed-media formats can also increase the amount of media/data files you can carry with you.
:jawdrop:
|
| |
|
|
|
09-29-2004, 03:27 PM
|
|
Mystic
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 1,887
|
|
Right conclusion, wrong rationale. ;-)
Big cheap portable drives will be desirable, not just for video, but for all kinds of media; most especially music and photos.
It is worth remembering that the current "standards" of compressed data, Mp3, WMA, AAC, and JPEG are all *lossy* formats. With a 100Gb in your digital jukebox you could carry 100-200 cds in a lossless format instead of the lossy formats now in use. With video, you'd be able to store the video at ED or better resolutions instead of QVGA. Same number of files, higher quality.
The same goes for images; the recent Adobe digital negative format is geared in that very direction because massive portable storage is becoming so cheap that soon, lossy formats won't make much sense for many applications. Certainly in digital photography, the availability of 1GB flash cards for under $100 makes JPEG less attractive than RAW since a photography session is not likely going to require 500 photos...
Nature abhors an empty hard drive, and one of the most common ways to use storage space up is by transitioning to higher quality data-files. ;-)
Which we will.
|
| |
|
|
|
09-29-2004, 03:31 PM
|
|
Sage
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 651
|
|
Right now I have a 40 gig iPod and that only holds about 30% of my music collection. In another six months after I have converted more of my vinly over that percentage will drop. I hate when I have to decide on what should go on my iPod, in the car I have a neo car jukebox with a 200 gig drive in it. Enough to hold my music collection at the moment but it's getting smaller everytime I add something new.
When I first got into computers a 1.2 mb floppy was considered big enough for just about anything, when I started college our class was the first class to receive computers with hard drives (40 megs). Three months after getting those drives we were doublestacking them. You may not need the storage space today, but you will need it as you go. With the advancements in portable media players now people will want to carry as much with them whenever they can. Reminds me of my high school days carrying all those cassette tapes to listen to in my walkman. For me it's all about the data. I'm even making plans for a SAN at home.
|
| |
|
|
|
09-29-2004, 03:49 PM
|
|
Theorist
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 267
|
|
The average person (read "not us") will not take the time to rip everything to whatever storage media/device is available. However, I can see the day coming when hard copies of music, movies, etc., will be replaced by files sent directly to the home. It will take more bandwidth, huge storage capabilities (think about everyone's DVD collections in high-def on a hard drive) and will almost surely come with half a dozen, incompatible, Draconian DRM schemes.
Storage capacity, processor speed, graphics speed, etc., usually far exceed the needs of the average user. We don't see that, because we find uses for all the speed and storage. This stuff will become ubiquitous when there is a reason for the average user to have it.
|
| |
|
|
|
09-29-2004, 04:00 PM
|
|
Sage
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 734
|
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Shuushin
My opinion is that the portable storage will be the focus; how much can we bring with us. Its more of a "peace of mind" thing. Who really needs to have 40Gb of music and and ultimately a movie collection in their pocket?
|
I wouldn't go so far as to say we 'need' it - but life sure sucks without it! I bought an Archos Gmini 400 20 gig multimedia player earlier this month. I don't have that many MP3's, so I started ripping my own movies. I can store around 40 movies on it; since I rip them to a lower resolution. 40 movies.
40 *full length* *good quality* *movies*. And that's with just 20 gigs. Imagine a 200 gig drive: 400 movies. A 1.000 gig drive: 2000 movies.... and so on and so forth. If all these scifi like specs do come true, I'll be able to carry every movie ever made on a postage stamp sized card by the end of next decade....
|
| |
|
|
|
09-29-2004, 04:02 PM
|
|
Theorist
Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 276
|
|
Ahh... this article reminds me to start building my super distributed file system cluster based Beowolf clusters. 
|
| |
|
|
|
09-29-2004, 04:05 PM
|
|
Neophyte
Join Date: Sep 2003
Posts: 6
|
|
I have over 75GB of MP3's and M4P's and it grows weekly. So, 40GB just isn't enough for me. 64MB wasn't either when the first player came out hence my holding off the purchase of my first MP3 player until the iPod 30GB.
One thing I've learned through my computing years is you can never say "I have enough". With progressing technologies, demands just get bigger. MS and their quest to be the next HD DVD standard will trickle down to portable players and those files won't be small. Music will follow suit. SACD and DVD-A like formats will be here soon and they will be large files and we'll need those petabytes, trust me.
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Linear Mode
