Blu-Ray and HD-DVD fighting a lost battle? Holographic storage arrives sooner than you think

Am I the only one who doesn't like the size of the HVD? If there must be a size change, I'd want it to get smaller. Bigger == badder, and I don't mean that in a good way. I want MORE storage in LESS volume, not MORE storage in MORE volume. If more space on the same disc were all that important, we'd be carrying around laserdiscs. Ugh, can you imagine?

"Hey, can I borrow your copy of Halo 5?"
"Sure, just let me get my laserdisc out of my unnecessarily bulky backpack.... And be careful going through doors, you have to slip it through sideways."

Look at any futuristic movie. How big was the device carrying the data for the Death Star in, larger or smaller than a DVD? Duh! It's smaller! Future portable data-storage formats are small. I want small. Small is good. And for more than discs, too...

Im holdin out unitl yottabyte storage come along

soothsayer, i totally agree. what's the point of more storage if it just means a bigger disc?

Yes, the "multiple DVD" solution will work only for linear games.

Since Microsoft screwed by selling 2 different SKUs, developers can't count on a
hard drive unless they'll be willing to cripple 30% of actual 360 consoles sold
(or cripple their game to 70% of the 360 market), let alone games that will need
an even bigger hard drive; those would cripple every 360 out there unless every
consumer is willing to shell out more than a hundred bucks plus 60 bucks on a
game (while crippling their game to all the consoles sold except the ones that
were sold in the beginning with no HD or an inferior HD, which could potentially
be 10 million consoles). Isn't it very confusing?

Is this off topic? I don't think so. HVD has a long time to come out with a
decent price tag (for both the player and the discs). By that time, Blu-ray will
have overwhelmed HD-DVD and will have started to take over DVD. Why is that?
Because as far as it concerns studios, Blu-ray discs prices will go down to DVD
price, just like DVD went to VHS price, automatically crippling DVD discs and
players because all Blu-ray discs will cost (eventually) the same and Blu-ray
players will be able to play both formats, as opposed to DVD players.

After that comes HVD, PS4, 2000+p resolutions, etcetera which could potentially
replace Blu-ray on time.

Then comes PS5, and AHVD (Atomic HVD) which could potentially store from 10 to
10 million Terabytes (yes, from 10 to 10 million) on a single disc, enabling the
possibility for UHDV (Ultra High Definition Video) which was already developed
by NHK, the Japanese PBS equivalent, and displays a resolution of 4320p.
Consumers were not ready for that yet though, as they responded with dizziness
because the image was 'too realistic' and 'it seemed you were literally there'.

After that comes Sub-atomic HVD, PS6, Supra UHDV resolutions, etcetera. Or who
knows, by that time TV might be replaced by hologram displayers, which have
already been developed by "Hitachi". Look it up.

Then comes volumetric storage (or an improved version of sub-atomic HVD, with
applications of quantum physics for quantum computers, qubits, etcetera), with
improved hologram displayers, PS7, etcetera.

I'm sure Nintendo will find great innovative ways to play games with holograms.
There have already been developed interactive holograms, so you can be sure that
"Revolution 3D" will do something like that. I don't know how Microsoft will
take advantage of this and LIVE at the same time.

Other technologies like biotech genetical engineering could take place here.
Perhaps by then we will have transcended present controllers.
This could happen in a life span of 50 years or so. We could still be alive!
LOL

How is this relevant? We are in a videogames blog, and as you just mentioned,
we are looking at technologies that will revolutionize the industry, and that
will replace present tech.

Wow, 50 posts, NOBODY "GET's IT"!?!

HVD WILL NOT REPLACE BLU-RAY/HD-DVD IN THE HOME THEATER MARKET.

Blu-Ray/HD-DVD are PRE-RECORDED MOVIE FORMATS, first and foremost. Duh. But that's different than a computer back up format.

We are just NOW moving to the HDTV Television Standard -- the resolution that BD/HD-DVD support. HVD will not matter in this case (except to offer the ability to have less compression on movies). The suggested "2000p" format (it'll actually be 4000p, since that's the new Theater standard) will have no implmenetation in the home. NO HDTVs Will display 4000p -- just like no Standard Definition TVs can display 720p or 1080i. HVD won't help here. So BD/HD-DVD will be a very long-lasting standard indeed.

So there will be NO REASON to move from a BD/HD-DVD type standard in the Home Theater market. NONE!

But for computers? YAY! BRING IT ON!!! I already hate backin' up my 250GB drive. And HVD is just one step in a long line of progression: Floppy --> Hard Disk --> CD -> DVD --> HD-DVD --> BD --> HVD --> ...

So like I said, HVD WILL NOT REPLACE BD/HD-DVD in the HOME THEATER MARKET.

Bring on the format war!

-Pie

It is going to be so cool watching movies in HVD format and not have to worry about going to Blu-Ray or HD DVD.

Great table comparing different storage media, including both versions of holographic disks:

http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/pop_image/mag_content/20051027180049/ta_fig2.jpg

from: Asakawa, Naoki, Holography Accelerates towards Terabyte Discs, Nikkei Electronics Asia, E Asia NOV 2005 Issue

Optware is also planning to launch holographic disks in 2006. In some respects, they are farther ahead than InPhase with respect to media standardization:

http://www.holoforum.com/showthread.php?t=87

HVD looks good -- but the cost will have to come down. Hopefully by OptWare licensing out the production to anyone, all the competition will bring down the cost of HVDs and HVD-players, the same way it did for DVDs. Didn't the first DVD players cost over $1000? That's what I remember -- and now you can buy them for under $50. Create a standard, offer the technology under license, and then let the competition begin.

we should just terminate our blue laser DVD tech research for this new terrabyte storage!

OK, for some of you that're saying any of this technology is WAY far off, both InPhase and Optware claim their products will be ready to market in 2006, and have already shown off their prototype. Hell, they even have formats that are completely read/writable that're well developed apparently, which is more than I can say for Blu-ray. As for the person talking about how long it'd be to burn them, well I've heard comments of 120 mbs possible, meaning that while it'd still take quite a while to fill one, it'd only take roughly 34 seconds to burn an entire DVD's size.

As for never being able to use that much space even in 2050... Well, look at how much storage space we used 10 years ago... Right now my windows directory takes up 2.7 GB. windows 95 (roughly 10 years ago, right?) took up 72 megs of space (which was big at the time.) 10 years before that, Windows 1.0 (1985) took up less than 1 MB... Sounds like a decent ammount of growth to me. Now, of course there's the fact that there's a limit to how much code man kind can write and how much values of code can take up, we'll probably find new and more innovative ways to waste memory to optomize speed. Though really, it should be reasonably challenging seeing as holographic memory is random-access, which by the way, means that if it were applied to console gaming, there wouldn't be load times.

We don't NEED it yet, but chances are it'll be used for certain niche commercial uses for a while and slowly phased into consumer use.

PS:If I remember right holographic memory didn't hold much potential for perminent hard drives because of the limit of times data can be modified/read accurately if I remember right... Check out the howstuffworks article on it for more details, it's been a long time since I've read it.

PSS:Erm, personally I'd like to see something other than a disk for holographic storage... Just for the coolness factor and it being something new... I mean honestly, it doesn't need to be a disk so much for it, so give us something more interestingly shaped!!! >.>

You are all GEEKS. Hell I am a GEEK. This is actually a good thing. I don't think that blue ray or HVD will quickly become a standard. Which ever format wins will probably be the standard between 2010 and 2020 when holographic storage will be needed. Until then Holographic storage will only be a niche used only by those that either really need it like big companies or by those who can afford and understand it like Geeks.

I would probably buy holographic storage once it fell to a reasonable price since I currently have close to a TB of storage and have had to get rid of some content due to the lack of storage. Sure I could use DVD's to back up some of that content but can you imagine how many DVD's I would have to burn?

The People who greatly need that amount of storage are those that constantly have to process and store video which require a great amount of storage.

Most of the people that I know do not currently need more than 40 GB of storage on their system and don't even use half as much. Only my fellow GEEKS think that 250GB of storage is not enough.

-Where would the world be without GEEKS?
-Probably still in the Stone Age.

size matters.
There was a time when 64kbps seemed reasonable enough for audio. Now all my audio is ripped and stored at 320kbps if possible. I have seen many episodes of the simpsons at a mere 24 Mb, now i want the proper sized rip. If all my digital media were at the highest resolution possible, and i had .iso's of all the games and linux distros and other crap i have in stacks of dvd's and cd's,
even i, lowly non-hacker, inept at any graphics manipulation software available, worthless videographer, EVEN I could use a Tb RIGHT NOW.
That, and the drives from Lucent that might be available in 2008 - "The company says that drive prices will initially be in the $12,000 to $15,000 (£7,000 to £8,500) range, but expect this to fall rapidly as sales volumes increase." from the links at the top of this page http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020415,39237204,00.htm
Even what's available NOW is less expensive:
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10647

And these drives will be backward compatible... Meaning the intermediary formats will A) NOT be lost in hardware transition B) NOT be rendered obsolete in the home theater market OR the gaming industry.
You won't be able to get a drive that writes to these media for quite some time, so until the qubits and polymers settle, I'll be fine with good ole magnetic drives. 100 Mbs transfer rates and faster seek times coupled with faster/multiple cpus and gigs of ram have quickly brought us real time streaming at high defs. WIMAX is coming... I need TB's

Well, imdb carried a story today about holographic discs and how it could make Blu-Ray and HD DVD quickly obsolete. Ouch.

#18



"The article notes that the transfer rate is at an average of 1 gigabit/second. That is equal to 0.125 gigabytes/second, or 128 megabytes/second"



From the HVD wiki. It won't be long at all. :)