Japanese researchers devise method for cramming 42GB on a DVD
[Via CrunchGear]
Filed under: Blu-ray, Other formats
[Via CrunchGear]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
L3 @ Jun 27th 2008 1:06PM
I see. So other than the negatives which include uselessness, GREAT JOB.
Bluemanrule @ Jun 27th 2008 1:11PM
With the proliferation of upscaling DVD-players and the current cost of entry to High-Definition media, this development could substantially hamper the majority adoption of Blu-Ray. I, personally, feel that this development is great and could provide an entirely viable & cost-effective storage medium. Well done, Tohoku University. Well done! :claps:
WebDev511 @ Jun 27th 2008 1:18PM
I didn't see this coming. If it doesn't add more than a $50-$100 premium over existing red laser dvd players and discs can be replicated on existing dvd lines, it could mean trouble for Blu. I wonder if Toshiba knew about this when it killed HD DVD?
The wild card is how much it would cost to implement, after all red laser is only part of the cost.
Who needs popcorn?
borland502 (SDF - Macross Ring) @ Jun 27th 2008 2:34PM
VMD says hi and asks if you'd mind sharing your stash.
Big Wizz @ Jun 27th 2008 1:19PM
And yet, none of the studios would use it. B/C consumers think they are getting "more for their money" when they get 9 nine discs instead of one.
J.Goodwin @ Jun 27th 2008 1:21PM
Those wacky scientists. It's a amazing what they can do when they don't have one of the world's largest media conglomerates combined with the world's largest videgame console maker combined with one of the world's largest television and home entertainment device makers breathing down their necks about device tie-in.
joe @ Jun 27th 2008 1:50PM
Ah holy crap you people are crazy.
Even right in the short blurb it says that this technology is incompatible with normal dvd players.
This has nothing to do with BD or current DVDs.
What they are doing is writing and reading the pits at a series of angles requiring lasers that are either fixed at 9 positions or a single laser that can tilt to one of 9 preset angles. It is likely using some sort of interference filter to increase the s/n ratio due to adjacent pits.
Although it works at the same wavelengths it is very similar to dvd's it is also very different. It would require very different production equipment if this were ever to be produced.
The process they adopted seems very similar to lenticular printing.The kind of printing they use to make those animated cups at 7-11. If they did this right they should also be able to get 9x the throughput on sequentially written data as compared to a standard disk.
It seems from the original press release that they have only managed to get this working with a silicon wafer as the substrate. I'm a bit lost on how they plan to use this with polycarbonate disks that use a nearly flat recording layer.
Jimmy @ Jun 27th 2008 2:50PM
Joe, thank you.
This is interesting research and I applaud the scientists that did it but thats as far as I can go. Even if these scientists were able to get this product out to customers in the next 12 months it would still not be viable in today's market.
Where would it's uses be?
Computer storage:
1. Hard drives are cheap and getting cheaper per GB almost daily.
2. Cheap optical storage exists in the form of DVD and dropping in price very fast is Blu-ray.
3. Holographic storage is already available in 300GB capacities. This storage method is expected to hit capacities over 1TB in the next two years.
Portable devices:
No chance to compete against Flash memory devices. Besides flash memory retails for about $5/GB and getting cheaper.
Entertainment/Home Theater:
People would have to buy new players. These new players would be more expensive than standard DVD players. Blu-ray players will be at $200 by holiday's 2008. The price area between $50 and $200 does not leave much room to compete. What movies would be released on it? Hollywood has signed off on Blu-ray and Bollywood has signed off on VMD.
I am open to suggestions but at this point I fail to see where in today's market this can fit. The research is great and may have uses in other places but as a DVD optical storage medium it does not make economic sense.
Nfinity @ Jun 27th 2008 3:01PM
Jimmy.. again..being completely irrational..
How the hell can you say that these players would be more expensive? It's just a change in the angle of optical laser of existing $50 DVD players..it's not manufacturing new one.
Second why is it a drawback that it can't be applied to Blu-Ray.. WHO GIVES A CRAP.. if it works and can store 42gb of data, with the speed of drives we have now plus VC1 encoding we get the same quality off Blu-Ray in HD.. but at the price 3 times lower then Blu-Ray.
It's only a drawback if you have significant investment and already spilled major cash into Blu-Ray and now are hoping that nothing else will succeed.
Oh and you need to stop smoking whatever you're smoking cause Profile 2.0 player at $200 will be on the market probably in 2 years..not this holiday season...
Don't you read the studies?!
A drop from $$350-$400 to $200 without any competition will never happen..
if it does.. awesome.. but knowing BDA criminals, it ain't gonna happen because that wasn't the plan to begin with. The plan is to milk consumers for a couple of years at $300+ prices before introducing anything quality at $200 range. Get real for christ sake.
joe @ Jun 27th 2008 7:12PM
Nfinity-
Woah you took the express bus to crazy land today.
It's not just a simple change to the optics of a $50 dvd player. If it was this would have been done years ago.
It's using multiple laser angles and methods of polarization to achieve it's increase in data density.
This would be CRAZY expensive.
1 this is a experimental proof of concept.
2 the optics, as it appears, from their press release and my piss poor Japanese are non trivial. It would be a much more complicated process to mass manufacture the optics of the current design.
3 It can't use standard polycarbonate disks yet. They have only proofed it on silicon blanks.
What they have done is impressive but it is not a product. Nor is it meant to be. More research is required and eventually this could prove to be method of improvement for all optical technologies.
I hope the researches get to see this thread. I'd bet they would get a kick out of people getting so excited about their work.
Nfinity @ Jun 27th 2008 2:54PM
The best part about this is that even though you would need to buy the new player it would be dirt cheap as it really isn't using anything that more expensive.. they could make these at $50, be able to read 42gb disc and be encoded with VC1 using super-upscaling technology..
Imagine the possibilities!... dirt cheap extension of DVD technology, same manufacturing...
I love it when I know how pissed off this makes BDA criminals.. Love it!
But then again, I'm pretty sure they'd be paying another couple of billion and break a couple of more laws and do a few blackmails to prevent this technology from reaching the consumer.
Time will tell.. but DVD future looks brighter then ever.
Imagine the future
HD content at full 1080p and lossless audio on regular DVDs, $50-$100 Chinese DVD players with this technology and super-upscaling existing DVDs to pretty much HD with SpursEngine.
What a joy would that be for everyone. Dirt cheap HD on optical media at prices of DVDs.
gamedude420 @ Jun 27th 2008 3:28PM
actually you wouldnt get the same quality of hd from these as you would from bluray or even hd-dvd because o the low bitrate for one. now sure you could store hd on it but couldnt view it in the same quality. maybe if they included a hard drive so you could download the video to the drive or even partially and stream the rest. so it would prob actually be just as expensive as bluray if not more so. either way it will not come out because it would fail with bluray already as the disc media of choice for HD
DEEZNUTZ @ Jun 27th 2008 5:02PM
OK assuming that you're right and we can get this working on players for $50, This wouldn't be compatible with the current replication equipment being used for discs. It would probably cost too much to get them to work with this new method.
Anyhow, wish they would have discovered this 2-3 years ago and completely avoided the format war.
Nfinity @ Jun 27th 2008 6:54PM
DEEZNUTZ,
it's a slight manufacturing change to accommodate more of those data pits. I see no reason why anyone would have to buy WHOLE NEW machines when HD DVD for example only required a $50k investment to turn an existing DVD replication line to HD DVD one.
It is logical to conclude that the production on these, yield rates and similar will be at the level of existing DVDs. It's using same type of discs.
Unlike this technology, Blu-Ray is requiring a COMPLETE multimillion dollar replacement of a machine, and even with that the speed of replication and yield rate on BD50s are extremely high to be used in mass replication.
I don't see how this new DVD won't be significantly cheaper then Blu-Ray.
Nfinity @ Jun 27th 2008 3:42PM
Why exactly are posts being deleted that are in no way insulting to anyone? This is becoming really silly..
Nfinity @ Jun 27th 2008 4:08PM
oops..conspiracy theory raging here :) it's the retarded comments system again.. my bad
Joe @ Jun 27th 2008 7:13PM
So that's what happens!
The your posts that don't insult anyone get eaten by the system.
Mystery Solved. :)
Happy Friday.
Godskitchen @ Jun 27th 2008 3:58PM
DVD is over guys, time to move on, 42Gb is not enough. 1080p is not enough, luckly BD has nore room so higher rez is possible. Its only a matter of time before we see 1440p or 4K on BD.
This DVD thing cant do that.
Or am I wrong in thinking everyone who comes here likes HD and wants Higher HD?
Nfinity @ Jun 27th 2008 4:19PM
That's not the point..everyone is aware that DVD is coming to an end..
The beauty of this technology is that it will ride nice HD for 2-3 more years with much much cheaper prices then Blu-Ray with most likely cheaper media as they are still pretty much regular DVDs until we switch to digital downloads which is inevitable.
There's absolutely no point developing optical media anymore then for next 2-3 years.. The storage on hard disk solid state drives is 100x more reliable, less sustainable to damage (SSDs), faster, already at 750gb for $130 etc etc.
So the question is.. would you rather have same quality HD or whatever that is offering similar quality but relying on the existing manufacturing so you can keep the prices dirt cheap, help mainstream consumers switch to HD much faster and cheaper to HD and then slowly transfer everything to where the real future is.. digital downloads..
This technology essentially allows us to get HD quality out of DVD technology at extremely low prices as the DVD has been out for so long that materials and technology is dirt cheap even with revisions to the media or some fine tuning of optics the players and discs should be in the DVD price range.. just like they evolving DVD over the course of past decade with features and changes in media.
We just need good cheap solution to get us through the next 2-3 ok even 5 years.. that's it.. by then optical will be completely obsolete.
I can see Blu-Ray only being good in the long run for some kind of PC storage.. that's it. Being well aware they will milk the high prices for 2 more years or more, the only thing they are hurting is mass adoption.
Thank god that there are pressures from technologies like this one, super-upscaling and fast growing digital downloads that are corrupting their plans hopefully.
I don't have anything against HD.. I love it and want the highest quality, but I also don't want to be ripped off and will never support a group of cartel like manufacturers that are actually hurting adoption by trying to milk the money.
DVD4ME @ Jun 28th 2008 2:01AM
Yeah right, as if the GDA, that's Greed Disc Association, would ever up the res on BD, LOL. That's an opportunity for yet another format, force people into new hardware and software all over again, it is after all the sony gravy train remember.
Jeebus @ Jun 27th 2008 4:37PM
Too little, too late. Blu-ray is already heading for 100GB with only a firmware upgrade.
Gus @ Jun 27th 2008 7:55PM
Yeah, just after profile 2.0 hits $100
gamedude420 @ Jun 27th 2008 8:38PM
meant movie files as in video files.
Jeebus @ Jul 2nd 2008 2:17PM
All I'm saying is that 100GB BDs are come before we see 42GB DVDs.
J.Goodwin @ Jun 27th 2008 4:41PM
Yeah, data storage, like for a videogame console. Game console makers have long loved to have formats that are slightly off the mainstream. DVD offers a lot of positives (fast data transfer, cheap to manufacture) and this could have similar advantages if they get the technical production issues sorted out.
Platform holders like to be able to control production (increase ancillary fees on 3rd party titles), and offbeat formats have a tendency to reduce piracy, at least for a while.
gamedude420 @ Jun 27th 2008 5:10PM
at only 42GB it would be too small for future video game consoles. its either bluray or the Holodisc with 1Tb of data. unless SSD media can hit 200+ GB to 1TB plus can cost under $1 to make
Nfinity @ Jun 27th 2008 5:37PM
I see you are drinking the Kojima cool-aid.
Come on.. 42gb is PLENTY for games.. Hell evern BD25gb is enough. With new engines doing real time rendering of content and animation there's no need for storing those on media they are rendered in real time.
Only Kojima can't fit the game on 50gb because he is making a 20 hour movie and not a game.
gamedude420 @ Jun 27th 2008 8:34PM
um metal gearl solid does not use move files all of that stuff is rendered using the game engine to save space. if it was using video files then the game would be using a 100GB bluray disc.
Harmin C. @ Jun 27th 2008 5:55PM
I've been visiting this site for about 2 years now... And I can say I remember Nfinity. He was always the very vocal supporter or HD-DVD. I also supported hd-dvd and till do( just yesterday i bought about 6 movies for about 40 bucks at my local futureshop). But never once did I see in his posts in favor of hd-dvd his mention of optical storage being gone within 5 years as he does now.
It seems he's still pissed that hd-dvd lost, as am I, but i moved onto blu-ray now. I dont get why hes saying the price hasn't come down. Just 30 days ago I bought the LG Bh200 blu-ray/hd-dvd combo player for about 328.99 new... thats about a 700 dollar drop then what it came in as. Its only been what 2 years, since blu-ray has been out and its players are already sub-400...some such as the insignia down to sub-300. DVD achieved this after 4 years. I remember my uncle bought a dvd player for 800 bucks.
No offense Nfinity, I know you make a ton of valid, logical points but why the blu-ray hate? I just cannot understand how you can say flash media will eliminate optical media for movie viewing? People often say it'll happen just as it happened to the music industry. Thats a completely different issue. What MP3 did was allow users to get an insane numbers of songs, have the ability to play it anywhere in a small compact design. There is a very negligible difference between the sound quality of cd's versus downloadable music. People will obviously choose the ability to have 4000 songs which sound nearly the same to about 20 songs on a cd.You can listen to music anytime, but viewing movies is much different.
First off, most people prefer to wach films on television, they cannot just put on headphones like they do for mp3 players. You need a medium to watch movies. Hardly anyone i know prefers to watch movies on their computers as opposed to televisions. So the convenience factor of having 4000 songs and listening to them anywhere is lost because most people will still go watch a movie on their televisions. Second, the U.S. lacks the infrastructure to support high bandwidth broadband. There is no way they can implement verizon fios like speeds to every american within the next 5 years. Expect slow broadband periods in the coming years as 100 million americans each with a 25 mbps or higher connection logs on to download a 50 gig movie. Third, there is no possible way flash memory can reach the size advantage mp3 players have over cd's. There are rumored quad-layer 100 gb blu-ray discs in development. To say that flash memory will overtake those anytime soon is laughable. To say a 1 terabyte HDD will replace blu-ray is the same as saying those 20 gb hard drives replaced floppies and cd's back in the day. Fourth, is the quality factor. Most people who download movies today watch quality that is slightly worse than dvd. And what do most of these people do? They burn them onto dvd's to watch. Now, every major movie company, almost every electronics company is behind blu-ray. They will not support a move straight to flash media where they will have to cut costs because they cannot charge 30 bucks just for a file. People want physical media, otherwise PPV would have destroyed rental sales long ago but we know thats not true.
There is more I could write, but I'll stop now because i doubt anyone will read of all this. As more and more people buy HDTV's, they realize the limitations of dvd and want more. Even on my Reon HQV XA2, my LG bh200 with is Qdeo processor, I can notice a substantial difference between 1080p upscaled dvd to hd-dvd/blu-ray. If people want to look it up they can, type "u.s. broadband infrastructure" in google to see how far back the U.S. is, theres no way they'll ever be able to have 100 million americans all have speeds of 25 mbps downloading 50 to 100 gigs worth of data all in the same time. Nfinity, you were such an adamant supporter of hd-dvd so why hate blu-ray for nearly the same faults you can find in hd-dvd. We all learned that the reason hd-dvd was actually cheaper was because Toshiba incurred huge losses selling them so cheap and it wasn't sustainable.
Currently, all i know is that people download illegal torrents of movies and burn them to dvd and watch them. I predict that maybe after the year 2015 physical media may become obsolete and that flash memory may be big enough and cheap enough, but thats wishful thinking.
squiggleslash @ Jun 27th 2008 6:04PM
It's too late. Anyway, by this point it should be obvious that push towards a blue lasers has little or nothing to do with capacity. Red-laser technology can be stretched a number of ways, including:
- Adjustment of aperture. This is actually the main difference between Blu-ray and HD DVD on the media level and why it's able to squeeze 66% more capacity per layer into each disc. Unfortunately it also isn't compatible with DVD pressing equipment, which HD DVD's more conservative approach was. Still, had the same improvement been done to DVD, we'd be looking at 8G per layer. Slight adjustments required to DVD drives, but nothing that would make them significantly more expensive.
- Multilayer technology - this is what HD-VMD does. Unfortunately the media itself becomes more expensive if you go down this route. Most DVD drives can read this with a firmware update.
- Multilevel encoding - a promising technology that was, at one point, a rival for blue-violet laser technology. Few downsides, but required modifications at a hardware level. You could easily squeeze around 25G per layer using this technology, using red lasers. Theoretically transferable to blue-laser technology. Possibly fragile.
With the exception of multilayer technology, which ironically is the only one that went into production, all of these technologies were passed over by the great and the good when it came time to design a replacement for DVD media.
The technology described by this article sounds interesting and I suspect it's probably as cheap and robust as DVD. It may even - because of the less onerous accuracy required, be slightly more robust than Blu-ray if given the same anti-scratch treatments. But it's too late. The industry has standardized on blue-lasers, and frankly, even if Blu-ray is a flop, the most probable end result would be "Blu-ray II", sticking with blue lasers but changing the software side. In time, blue-violet lasers will be cheap, as "DVD red" lasers are now, and as "CD red" lasers were before that. The industry is no longer bothered about the costs of the lasers. The right time for this to have come out was in 2002. It's too late now.
Shame, because if one of the HD formats had adopted it, I'm sure we'd be seeing cheap players by now.
why not the LS2LS7? @ Jun 28th 2008 2:08AM
The DVD consortium abandoned chirped (short aperture) red lasers because they didn't give enough capacity. Early HD-DVD used it and it was dropped. There's no reason to think it will come back.
Multi-layer technology doesn't increase bandwidth, as it doesn't increase data density on a layer. To get 54mbit/sec from a red-laser disc requires a very fast disc spin rate, regardless of the number of layers. So any HD-VMD disc player is going to need to be 12X minimum. This increases cost, power usage and most of all noise. Think of how loud an Xbox 360's optical drive is while playing a game, and then try to make a movie player from that.
I'm pretty convinced red laser's time in the sun is over. It is cheaper, but the price gap is closing rapidly, and in short order, the increase in cost of the blue laser will be so small that red won't even be considered for video applications anymore.
squiggleslash @ Jun 28th 2008 8:24AM
You don't need to get anywhere near 12x (3X DVD, the red-laser version of HD DVD uses, as the name implies, a 3X spin-rate, and is only slightly lower bandwidth than HD DVD, I believe BD9 is similarly spec'd), but yes, you do have to suffer a faster spin rate and thus have to build the drive to dampen noise more than a regular DVD drive.
The really interesting thing is seeing online downloads starting to take off, with 4-6Gb being typical for the size of a two hour movie. That, admittedly, is at 720p, and with cheap sound (the latter of which is my principle objection), but it does suggest that we never really needed to get to the whole 50Gb target for media that the media makers both HD DVD and Blu-ray (the former proposing three layer discs...) got obsessive about.
The whole HD media thing has been depressing. There was an initial obsession with a type of laser that prove more difficult to make cheaply than initially thought. The format wars ended up with one format openly whoring itself with bad ideas in order to "win" the war for the audience that mattered - Hollywood - destroying its long term viability in order to score a short term win. And so, two years after the first HD player hit the shelves, we're looking at a world of expensive, under-spec'd, players that are obsolete before anyone buys them, supporting a format with no chance of being successful, with HD online downloads - the only real alternative - being a couple of years away from being ready for everyone. Great. Thanks Sony, Toshiba, et al.
Mike @ Jun 27th 2008 6:58PM
I could see MS using this in XBOX3 or apply the method to HD DVD and get 9 times a 51GB triple layer HD DVD on the XBOX3.
squiggleslash @ Jun 28th 2008 8:30AM
If this doesn't work with Blu-ray it's hard to see how it would work with HD DVD. The only serious difference between the two (on a media level) is the aperture size/distance of each layer from the disc surface.
I suspect MS will either go the "All online" route for X-Box 3 or use the, by then cheap, Blu-ray Disc media. Note this doesn't necessarily mean "Will play Blu-ray movies" - Nintendo uses DVD in the Wii, but the Wii cannot play DVD movies.