Japanese team discovers 'super disc' material

[mcdaking84]

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100...t-0de2eff.html

A Japanese research team has found a material that could be used to make a low-price super disc with data storage capacity thousands of times greater than a DVD, the lead scientist said Monday.

If the smallest particle is used, the new disc could hold more than 1,000 times as much information as a Blu-ray disc, provided that matching data-writing and reading equipment are developed.

Any thoughts?

[Atreyu]

Maybe a low cost disc, but I'm sure to make some money the player would cost quite a few bucks.

[Nerdkiller likes BD]

Hmmm...it would be nice to get all the seasons of a TV show on one disc, but then again, the corporations are all about money, so they'll probably either jack up the price, or space them out on multiple discs. Just saying.

[krazeyeyez]

Originally Posted by Nerdkiller likes BD

Hmmm...it would be nice to get all the seasons of a TV show on one disc, but then again, the corporations are all about money, so they'll probably either jack up the price, or space them out on multiple discs. Just saying.

My guess is these would be more for commercial applications, backing up networks, or storing data for software applications etc... although i could be wrong.

[Terjyn]

Far too many unknowns to take this seriously.

Scientists come up with theoreticals all the time, most of which don't turn into anything practical.

For example, if each one of these discs cost 1,000 dollars to make, that's really not too useful. The article (and probably the scientist) focuses on the price of the base material, but obviously there's more to it that just raw material cost.

[Anthony P]

no idea, the article is definitely missing something (i.e I don't understand the relationship between "The material, can switch back and forth between the metal and semiconductor states at room temperature when exposed to light" and data on disk)

In the end there is almost only one thing that is important, can such things be replicated instead of copied. Replication is fast, cheap and easy, writing is long and expensive. That is why we will most likely never see holographic or so0lid state memory used.
I will keep paying attention if there is development but one word of warning "he would start talks with private-sector companies for commercialisation." this usually means 90% of what you read is BS and way over exaggeration since it is a marketing job to get the right companies interested in funding the research. And best case scenario something could be around 10 years away.

[Musashi]

Lots of experimental optical discs get designed. A few are used for consumer media, others for business data storage, and many more that aren't used for anything but theoretical physics.

[dobyblue]

Wake me up when this Japanese team buys major CE's, Hollywood studios and retailers. Until then even if it's the most super awesome thing in the world without those three components it means nothing.

Blu-ray is here to stay for quite some time in my opinion. The retailers, studios, electronic giants, they don't particularly want to risk a) another format war or b) once again shuffling shelves to accomodate a new format.

[ricky_rocket]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

Blu-ray is here to stay for quite some time in my opinion. The retailers, studios, electronic giants, they don't particularly want to risk a) another format war or b) once again shuffling shelves to accomodate a new format.

I agree Blu-ray is here to stay...for awhile anyway. Probably in 5-7 more years when the average computer hard drive is defined in terabytes and not gigabytes (i.e more storage) and when broadband speed is 50Mps rather than 5Mps (i.e faster downloads). Then we'll just download or stream EVERYTHING from the internet and watch it real time or store it on our computers or media servers. We've been headed that way for several years now.

I don't think investing in Blu-ray media is a bad idea though. It could realistically be the LAST disc format ever used.