Ultraviolet discs

[Shrykull]

Take a look

http://www.engadget.com/2004/11/08/beyo ... cal-discs/

What would be next after these. I know holographic discs are in the works, but what about X-ray or gamma ray discs??? The shorter the wavelength the more you can fit on the disc.

I want these because I want the ability to put all episodes of a whole series on disc, like the Simpsons MAY fit on a UV disc or two.

[General Zod]

Someone didn't bother looking at the date of the article.

posted Nov 8th 2004 at 10:05AM

[Academia Nut]

Aside from the fact that eventually the size of your bits will have to hit the physical limit imposed by atoms, optical storage will hit many of the same problems transistor fabrication face today: namely that deep UV light and x-rays are a bitch to work with. Each one of those photons carries a lot of energy, enough to do damage to the discs and the templates used for making them. So not only will it be hard to make, but the discs will probably have much shorter lifespans because of the light being used to read them. Also, the machines used to do such work are huge and expensive. So there are a lot of physical limitations on simply using shorter and shorter wavelengths for the purposes of optical storage.

[Shrykull]

Someone didn't bother looking at the date of the article.

posted Nov 8th 2004 at 10:05AM

But we still don't have them yet.

[General Zod]

Someone didn't bother looking at the date of the article.

posted Nov 8th 2004 at 10:05AM

But we still don't have them yet.

Not only is it old, you didn't bother doing much in the way of searching for a follow up.

[phongn]

Do you have any clue how hard it would be to put an x-ray (never mind gamma-ray) laser into a consumer device? Or how you might reflect said x-ray or gamma ray back onto the sensor?

[Shroom Man 777]

Wouldn't that be prohibitively expensive and require radioactive stuff inside your disc readers?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Geez, I remember talking about these as long ago. The idea of a UV diode laser was quite far fetched, I mean just look at the cost of Blu-ray which is really only coming down thanks in part to the PS3 market penetration.

The next thing for mass storage will be holographic crystals of some description, likely using spintronics and related research into cramming more information into a given bunch of electrons. I don't think we need yet another disc, not when many consider solid state and downloads to be the future once the infrastructure and costs meet requirements.

[phongn]

How are "holographic crystals" and "spintronics" at all related to each other for the same data source?

Solid-state will lag behind physical media and is a hell of a lot more expensive to produce, too. Downloads might not be the future for content that uses up a lot of space, either - it's one thing entirely to download a 75MB album or 700MB movie, but high-quality HD movies? Have fun with that.

[Shrykull]

Each one of those photons carries a lot of energy, enough to do damage to the discs and the templates used for making them.

Not according to this, which a physicist told me on wikipedia at least.

If you have a laser that produces a 1 watt beam, the power is the same regardless of whether the beam is IR or UV. The laser that burns the best is the one that is absorbed the best in the target. Some materials absorb IR better, others absorb UV better. Note, though, that it's generally easier to make lasers at longer wavelengths. It's a lot easier to make a high power infrared laser than a high power ultraviolet one.

But I thought that shorter the wavelength the more energy, gamma rays have the most energy and the shortest wavelength.

[Darth Wong]

Each one of those photons carries a lot of energy, enough to do damage to the discs and the templates used for making them.

Not according to this, which a physicist told me on wikipedia at least.

If you have a laser that produces a 1 watt beam, the power is the same regardless of whether the beam is IR or UV. The laser that burns the best is the one that is absorbed the best in the target. Some materials absorb IR better, others absorb UV better. Note, though, that it's generally easier to make lasers at longer wavelengths. It's a lot easier to make a high power infrared laser than a high power ultraviolet one.

But I thought that shorter the wavelength the more energy, gamma rays have the most energy and the shortest wavelength.

High frequency and short wavelength radiation has more energy per photon. You could hypothetically make a low-power X-ray beam, but it would cause a lot more unwanted chemical alteration to the material than another beam of the same power with a different wavelength, because individual photons would be energetic enough to ionize atoms. Whether this damage is significant is another matter.

[Admiral Valdemar]

How are "holographic crystals" and "spintronics" at all related to each other for the same data source?

Optical spintronics has been a field of study for a few years now, though there's also the MO route. The idea of applying it, once refined, to holographic formats isn't new either. It's not happening any time soon, but it's one avenue of research I'm hoping will bear fruit.

Anyway, UV is one thing. I don't know of anyone seriously proposing X-ray or, heaven forbid, gamma. Let's get UV sorted first, if it can work and be cheap.

Solid-state will lag behind physical media and is a hell of a lot more expensive to produce, too. Downloads might not be the future for content that uses up a lot of space, either - it's one thing entirely to download a 75MB album or 700MB movie, but high-quality HD movies? Have fun with that.

No one said it was going to be an easy process. Given the number of companies keen on getting more and more services supplied via the net, it's not hard to imagine them considering HD content being the next step. Given how cluttered the airwaves are and how cable TV inevitably packages itself with the Internet, it would be worth having a network that managed to send every bit of media we needed via one line.

Who funds it is anyone's guess. The ISPs here have already voiced concern over costs and the government is apparently being told not to bolster broadband too.

[Hotfoot]

Solid-state will lag behind physical media and is a hell of a lot more expensive to produce, too. Downloads might not be the future for content that uses up a lot of space, either - it's one thing entirely to download a 75MB album or 700MB movie, but high-quality HD movies? Have fun with that.

They're already sending HD movies over the internet. Granted most are 720p, but the fact is that Sony, Microsoft, Apple, and I believe Netflix are all doing just exactly that: offering up HD movies for download. Right now, they're all rentals, though Sony is set to offer full digital purchases in the near future.

File sizes for these movies range from about 3-7GB, depending on quality, length, etc.

Meanwhile, hard drive space is cheap with the good old magnetic platters, disks are coming in terabyte and larger sizes, which is more than enough to have a substantial movie collection on a single drive, even an external. If you average an HD movie at around 5GB, then you can fit ~200 movies on one ~$200 external drive that you could carry with you from place to place.

Admittedly, solid state drives are more expensive by a large margin, but even those prices are continually coming down to be affordable (though nowhere near as cheap as platters, obviously). I could fit 1-2 HD movies on an 8GB SDHC chip that costs around $20 on Amazon.

Also, Cable companies offer HD programming on demand, which while not exactly the same is in the same general ballpark. So HD content via the net is not something that we are looking forward to in a couple of years, it is something that is happening now, and has been going on for some time actually.

[Uraniun235]

I don't think disks larger than 1TB are currently available, although if I remember right 1.5TB disks are slated for a mid-09 release. That said, platter storage is incredibly inexpensive these days, it looks like we've just hit the 8 GB/$1 USD mark here.

The biggest bottleneck is going to be the internet connection itself, and that's going to have to be addressed at multiple points. Streaming a lot of HD movies is going to be enormously expensive for companies as purchasing that much bandwidth won't be cheap at all, there are still quite a few people with low-end broadband connections with few alternatives in their localities, and ISPs like Comcast are looking at (or are already) establishing hard usage caps - caps which may seem generous today, but may be confining after you start shoving a lot of HD video content over it.

[Hotfoot]

I can walk into a computer store today and pick up a 1.5TB disk. External, even, if I really wanted to. Yes, even from Best Buy. It's a bit more expensive per GB, but the option is there.

Comcast and a few other companies are toying with the idea of bandwidth caps, but Verizon FiOS could well end that trend before it gains headway. Verizon has, IIRC, directly stated that they have no intention of capping their bandwidth, and as streaming HD gains more headway, the cable companies will have to bow to competition.

[Uraniun235]

Oh hey, looks like Seagate came out with those last month. Guess that's what I get for just paying attention to Newegg.

Verizon is only available in certain areas of the US. There are other areas where Verizon has absolutely no presence.

[Hotfoot]

Oh hey, looks like Seagate came out with those last month. Guess that's what I get for just paying attention to Newegg.

Verizon is only available in certain areas of the US. There are other areas where Verizon has absolutely no presence.

True, but that will change as they lay down more fiber lines. In the meantime, most of the bandwidth caps aren't in place yet, though Comcast is starting next month at 250 GB per month.

For those of you at home keeping score, that's about 50 HD movies per month, assuming no other traffic. It sucks that it's started, sure, but let's do be honest, bandwidth does cost money, and it's always been the case that there's a small percentage of people hogging most of it. All told, I'll happily be swapping to Verizon when it comes to me, but for right now I'll suffer through Comcast quite nicely.

Now, that said, as a better network is created, it will make high-bandwidth things easier, but the idea that the technology is something for the future is a little silly when it's being done right now, and actually has been going for a few years at this point.

[Starglider]

Adding more layers is vastly easier than messing about with deep ultraviolet, and going to fully holographic storage is almost certainly much easier than using x-rays or electrons. Optical is going to get steadily less relevant anyway in the face of more bandwith (wired and wireless, with coverage approaching 'universal') and exponential growth in flash capacity. So I fully expect manufacturers to favor (relatively) cheap incremental options, e.g. adding more layers.

[apocolypse]

Solid-state will lag behind physical media and is a hell of a lot more expensive to produce, too. Downloads might not be the future for content that uses up a lot of space, either - it's one thing entirely to download a 75MB album or 700MB movie, but high-quality HD movies? Have fun with that.

They're already sending HD movies over the internet. Granted most are 720p, but the fact is that Sony, Microsoft, Apple, and I believe Netflix are all doing just exactly that: offering up HD movies for download. Right now, they're all rentals, though Sony is set to offer full digital purchases in the near future.

Not that it's a big deal to the overall thread or anything like that, but w/ Xbox Live you purchase the movies (either SD or 720p HD). Now, the Netflix deal will open up streaming, but for now they're all DLed to the hard drive.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I recall reading somewhere that TDK was working on a 200 gig Blu-ray disc. I'm sure others are too, but that should offer some alternative that won't cost as much as solid state or be as hard to implement as downloads.

[Starglider]

I recall reading somewhere that TDK was working on a 200 gig Blu-ray disc.

Which works by stacking 8 standard blu-ray lasers, requiring only minor improvements to the optical system and pressing machines. That's exactly the kind of incremental advance I'm expecting over the next five years. Someone will probably succeed in taking a holographic disc format mass market in five to ten years, but I doubt it will be as successful as blu-ray (which in turn will likely ship a lot less discs over its lifetime than DVD).

[Admiral Valdemar]

I'm actually impressed at how fast Blu-ray has managed to go mainstream. Last year, I'd have expected most people to still not even know what it was, or at least the format war going on given people recall Beta vs. VHS and what a headache that was. Purchasing a PS3 helped too, because at least that future proofs me should Blu-ray really take-off sooner than expected, and if not, I still have it as a games console anyway.

BD-ROMs should tie us over nicely for the time being. What with the ability to increase the layers and possibly compress more data per layer even, it will be a while before we need anything bigger.

At least portable HDDs are coming down in cost and size and power consumption. I have an old 80 gig USB drive for my PC I got in 2005 which is the size of a small textbook. My iPod Classic is the same capacity, but sleek and slim and does more to boot.

[Netko]

I'm actually impressed at how fast Blu-ray has managed to go mainstream. Last year, I'd have expected most people to still not even know what it was, or at least the format war going on given people recall Beta vs. VHS and what a headache that was. Purchasing a PS3 helped too, because at least that future proofs me should Blu-ray really take-off sooner than expected, and if not, I still have it as a games console anyway.

I'm more impressed and surprised at how fast HDDVD folded, which led to the current Bluray situation. For HDDVD, it seemed like it started trailing for a few months, and then, BAM, everyone drops it like a hot potato in two weeks. I honestly didn't expect the format war to be resolved one way or the other by at least 2009, and then probably with readers that could read both formats (the DVD+R and DVD-R situation). Don't think I've ever seen such an outright cutting of losses in the tech industry - most of the time there is an attempt to leverage, at least in a legacy way, a failed (or in the case of HDDVD, at the time failing) tech. Its also a shame since it had some promise of bringing cheaper high density media into the marketplace and force prices down by competition. Plus, it was somewhat less DRM abusive.

[Uraniun235]

I just wish the prices would come down on BD burners and media. $250 for a burner? $10 a disc?? Fuuuck.