2000 Movies on a Single DVD? You Betcha'!

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10246057-1.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Crave' target='_blank'>http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105...feed&subj=Crave</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Last month, GE revealed that its research scientists had discovered a way, using holographic technology, to store 100 DVDs worth of information on a single standard DVD. What a difference a few weeks make. In what can only be seen as a "serving" (or pwning) of the GE researchers, the B-Boys researchers at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, have gone way past 100 and on to 2,000. While standard DVDs are made with three spatial dimensions, the Aussie researchers added two more. Using nanoparticles--extremely small bits of matter--the Swinburne team was able to introduce a spectral (or color) dimension and a polarization dimension."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1242933459.usr1.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>Let's get this right out of the way first: the researches are talking about a 5-10 year timeline on when the methodology for imprinting these discs would be commercially available. It's fascinating technology, to be sure, but as they point out in the article, even if you could fit every James Bond movie onto a single disc, how many people would be willing to pay the $300+ it would likely sell for? Still, business models aside, this is yet another example of how nanotechnology is going to shape our world over the next decade.</p>

[Chris Gohlke]

It would be sweet to get the entire Star Trek Collection on a single disk. Or heck even the entire extended edition of LOTR.

[Jason Dunn]

It would be sweet to get the entire Star Trek Collection on a single disk. Or heck even the entire extended edition of LOTR.

For sure - that's really appealing...but imagine the cost for long-running TV series! It's much easier to buy seasons one at a time for most people. Buying the whole Star Trek collection would require a payment plan. :D

[Chris Gohlke]

Toss in a little DRM and they could distribute one disk of everything and then let you unlock one season at a time.

Even though streaming is the future, depending on bandwidth costs there may still be a place for cheap, high capacity media.

[Jason Dunn]

Toss in a little DRM and they could distribute one disk of everything and then let you unlock one season at a time.

Nice! I like it. Well, not the DRM, but the idea of unlocking the disc. My one reservation would be that unless the player would physically modify the disc to permanently unlock it, what you'd really have is an encrypted disc that relies on a DRM server to play...and we all know what DRM servers can go offline, malfunction, etc.

Even though streaming is the future, depending on bandwidth costs there may still be a place for cheap, high capacity media.

I'm a firm believer that physical media will be around for decades to come - streaming/downloading is still a complete disaster on nearly every level when it comes to ease of use from a general consumer perspective.

[ptyork]

Nice! I like it. Well, not the DRM, but the idea of unlocking the disc. My one reservation would be that unless the player would physically modify the disc to permanently unlock it, what you'd really have is an encrypted disc that relies on a DRM server to play...and we all know what DRM servers can go offline, malfunction, etc.

YUCK!! Sounds eerily like those awful DIVX discs from a decade back. I boycotted Circuit City for two years over that abomination. For that reason alone, I wasn't all that teary-eyed to see them collapse last year. :)

I'm a firm believer that physical media will be around for decades to come - streaming/downloading is still a complete disaster on nearly every level when it comes to ease of use from a general consumer perspective.

Maybe you're right, but I'm not as certain. A decade and a half ago, we were still watching VHS tapes on giant 25" tube TV's, "surfing" BBS's at a blazing 28Kbps, and chatting with local Sysops in hope of "unlocking" a directory of soft-porn BMPs (or was that just me). The speed with which things have evolved is simply mind-boggling to me, but more to the point, I think that the speed of evolution in 'net-served digital media will bring an effective end to physical media within the next decade. Yeah, you'll probably still see DVD's for a while after that, but I think they'll be as "mainstream" as VHS was 5 years ago. Honestly, I think the only reasons we're not there now are the RIA and MPAA. Without their restrictions (I don't really blame them for instituting the restrictions, BTW), I think that resources would have long since been poured into solving the remaining niggling issues with streamed and/or downloaded media.

This particular media format is likely DOA. It is a (very cool) technology in search of a purpose. In partial response to another post, I think BluRay is likely in the same boat unless we see sub-$50 players and $15 media ASAP (like THIS holiday season). Otherwise, it'll be to the DVD as LaserDisc was to VHS.

FWIW, I still have over 80 LaserDiscs. :)

[Felix Torres]

Well, not to rain on anybody's parade, but that 5 year estimate is coming from the research crew, not engineers. So take it with a pound of salt.
The good news there is that holographic storage is imminent; the first 500Gb disks and readers were supposed to ship last december. Likely delayed, but... Real-soon-now.

Now, my take is that on the consumer level, this tech is *not* going to be about delivering entire video libraries on a 5 inch disk.
Sorry, but that is not going to happen; the wind is not blowing in that direction. By the time the tech is mature enough for that, the market won't be there.

At best, what we are going to see is *two* far cooler developments:
1- 5 inch disks holding 4K video (mostly) uncompressed for movie makers and digital theaters.
2- Small form factor (1-2 inch) disks with uncompressed 1080 video or compressed 4K video for home theater use.

A third use will be to ship Metal Gear Solid 8 with 50 hours of cut-scenes and two hours of QTE gameplay.:D

All this will come circa 2020, not 2015.
So lets not get carried away. :cool: