200 GB Blu-ray's on the way

[DaDane]

TDK Develops 200GB Blu-Ray Disc.

[thunderhawk]

Yup, great news

TDK Works on 200GB Blu-Ray Media

TDK Corp., a leading maker of recordable media, said Tuesday it was developing technologies that would leave behind its record of the last year and enable Blu-ray discs with 200GB of capacity.

..

A claim about possibility to enable 200GB Blu-ray media is targeted to showcase potential technology excellence of the Blu-ray discs over the competing HD DVD standard, which largest capacity is about 50GB today.

Traditional single-layer DVDs allow consumers to watch movies in 720x480 (NTSC) or 720x576 (PAL) resolution with Dolby Digital audio. The blue-laser discs will provide consumers 1920x1080 resolution as well as DTS or Dolby Digital Plus audio along with some additional interactive features.

Blu-ray and HD DVD formats compete for replacing the DVD standard. HD DVD discs can store up to 15GB on a single layer and up to 30GB on two layers. Its competitor, Blu-ray, can store up to 27GB per single layer and up to 50GB on two layers, but Blu-ray discs are more expensive to produce. The HD DVD is pushed aggressively by Toshiba and NEC as well as being standardized at the DVD Forum, which represents over 230 consumer electronics, information technology, and content companies worldwide. Blu-ray is backed by Sony and Panasonic, which are among the world’s largest makers of electronics. Among Hollywood studios HD is supported by Warner Bros. Studios, New Line Cinema, Paramount Pictures and Universal Pictures, whereas Sony Pictures, Walt Disney, Warner Bros. and Twentieth Century Fox endorse Blu-ray.

[spyguy999]

TDK: Ok, we're done with the 200GB recordable Blu-Ray
http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/28/t...dable-blu-ray/



The 200GB Blue Ray Disc Completed!
http://www.dlmag.com/news/1446/the-2...completed.html



TDK Develops 200GB Blu-ray Disc
http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/t...b-blu-ray-disc





Oh yeah !

[Shadowself]

These TDK 200GB disks are based upon 33 GB per layer. The current 25 & 50 GB disks are 25 GB per layer and the original roadmap had the 200 GB systems at eight layers. Will TDK still be able to push it to eight layers (264-267 GB)?

It's unfortunate Blu-ray did not start out with 33 GB per layer for all versions:
33 GB single layer
66 GB double layer
132 GB quad layer
200 GB six layer
267 GB eight layer (over 31 dual layer DVDs or over 5 years of your favorite TV show in SD)

Will the players/writers/PC drives for these 33 GB per layer disks be backwards compatible with the 25 GB per layer systems/disks?

[mainman]

Will the PS3 be able to read 33GB per layer discs?

I think it probably will, but wanted to be sure.

[georgir]

it probably wont, these 33gb layers are out of the specs, just a proof-of-concept prototype to get media attention. i'd be surprised if we ever hear about them again, let alone see them standartized and in production.

perhaps a (distant) future refinement of the specs could make use of such an increased layer density, but by that time technology would have achieved many other improvements aswell - phase modulation for example, so i'd expect much higher capacity per layer by then. if we haven't moved on to completely different (i.e holographic) storage methods that is.

[hmurchison]

You won't be buying 200GB discs anytime soon. And even if you could I doubt you'd have a player that could handle them. This a strictly a lab creation that will never see the light of day.

It already takes about 40 minutes to burn a single layer 25GB disc imagine what almost 10x that is going to do.

The format will likely never be a part of the official spec nor will it be affordable. Each layer requires tighter and tighter tolerance. Mass producing these things would be a nightmare.

[Blackraven]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

You won't be buying 200GB discs anytime soon. And even if you could I doubt you'd have a player that could handle them. This a strictly a lab creation that will never see the light of day.

It already takes about 40 minutes to burn a single layer 25GB disc imagine what almost 10x that is going to do.

The format will likely never be a part of the official spec nor will it be affordable. Each layer requires tighter and tighter tolerance. Mass producing these things would be a nightmare.

^^

In other words, he says that there has to be at least a "certain" demand. Right now, it's not even in the official Blu-ray spec (doesn't say anything on 33 GB/layer) and while this is indeed wonderful news, it only remains to demonstrate actual capability but not that it would be in stores anytime soon.

Based on current Blu-ray disc spec, it only says for 25 GB per layer so only the 100 GB could be the max (or the 150 GB one) but those won't come this year (probably next year or 2008).

So yeah, the guy is right in a sense that 33 GB/layer discs won't come out this year nor in the next (2008 is more probable timeline).

Speaking of which, haven't I seen you before? Are you from AVS forums???

[hmurchison]

Yup

I'm a future PS3 owner. I do support HD DVD quite openly.

[Shadowself]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

You won't be buying 200GB discs anytime soon. And even if you could I doubt you'd have a player that could handle them. This a strictly a lab creation that will never see the light of day.

It already takes about 40 minutes to burn a single layer 25GB disc imagine what almost 10x that is going to do.

The format will likely never be a part of the official spec nor will it be affordable. Each layer requires tighter and tighter tolerance. Mass producing these things would be a nightmare.

Things change and technology evolves.

True, current BD players and writers (for PCs) won't be able to handle 33 GB per layer, but things change. If you buy a BD player or writer within the next six months you won't be able to read or write to the 33 GB layer disks if they ever become the next standard.

However... SCSI was originally 5 MB/s and ended up going to 320 MB/s and is still evolving. The old 3.5 inch floppies started at 360/400 kB and ended up at 2.88 MB. USB was originally 12 Mbps, is currently 480 Mbps and is still evolving.

Will we see a "Blu-ray Disk Second Edition" with all the layers at 33.3 GB per layer and 267 GB per eight layer disk as a publicly available part of the Blu-ray standard? Maybe, maybe not. Who knows? I doubt anyone does right now. And if such a second revision spec does show up will the drives be backward compatible with first generation? Probably, but no one knows for sure.

To assume the technology will *NOT* evolve is foolish.

Also data rates (read/write rates) are increasing. Already a 4X burner has been announced. That's 20 minutes to burn a 25 GB disk. I would guess (and very likely be correct) that 8x and 16x burners will show up in the next few years. (Besides this is somewhat of a ruse in and of itself... If you just bought Seagate's new 750 GB drive, how much time would it take to back it up to *any* media? My best estimate is over two hours. As disks evolve that will come down in the future. It took me over an hour to back up my personal 30 MB drive to floppies in the mid 80s. Now I backup 30 MB in a few seconds.)

With regard to 33 GB per layer disks being a nightmare to mass produce... 10 years ago the thought of mass producing 25 GB or 50 GB disks would have seemed a nightmare to most people. Technology evolves.

Originally Posted by Blackraven

^^

In other words, he says that there has to be at least a "certain" demand. Right now, it's not even in the official Blu-ray spec (doesn't say anything on 33 GB/layer) and while this is indeed wonderful news, it only remains to demonstrate actual capability but not that it would be in stores anytime soon.

Based on current Blu-ray disc spec, it only says for 25 GB per layer so only the 100 GB could be the max (or the 150 GB one) but those won't come this year (probably next year or 2008).

So yeah, the guy is right in a sense that 33 GB/layer discs won't come out this year nor in the next (2008 is more probable timeline).

My understanding is the current spec allows for growth to 8 layers. That would be 200 GB for the current design with 25 GB layers.

Will there ever be a "certain" demand?

On another thread in these boards someone was complaining about having the black bars to maintain the original film's aspect ratio and wanted something that exactly fit his HDTV screen (16:9). One response was to suggest studios supply on each disk: 1) a HD version with black bars to maintain the origianl aspect ratio, 2) a HD version with the aspect ratio to fit the HDTV 16:9 aspect ratio exactly, and 3) a SD version at 4:3 (old pan and scan method possibly) for those with older TVs.

If studios do this, such a triple set of versions will take a fair amount of storage space and very likely will not fit on a 25 GB disk -- and may not fit onto the 50 GB version. Already some studios are claiming they may include such things as an "extended" or "director's" cut as well as the original theatrical cut of a given film. Again, if both versions are done in HD, these may not fit on either a single 25 GB or 50 GB disk.

When Blu-ray first started getting momentum as a publicly released medium for moving beyond DVDs one of the things people said is, "How are we going to use all that space?" -- especially with regard to the 50GB version.

I expect that within three years at most content providers will be providing things which need more than one 50 GB disk. (And I'm not thinking of the obvious one: many years of a given TV series on a single disk.)

In 5-10 years will content providers need 200+ GB disks to distribute their wares? I don't know, but it would not surprise me. Actually it would surprise me if content providers *couldn't* take advantage of a 200+ GB disks in the 5-10 year time frame. It is just reassuring to think that a current format (Blu-ray) might be able to evolve to handle that.

My thoughts on 200+ GB disks is that one of three things will happen...
A) Blu-ray second generation will allow 33.3 GB per layer (or more) with 6 or 8 layers
or
B) Holographic disks (HVD) will become a commercial reality and 300+ GB disks will replace Blu-ray completely.
or
C) A deep ultraviolet media will evolve which is purely a research project deep in some lab somewhere right now.

[sizzlemctwizzle]

I can understand why companies would want a 200 GB Disc for better quality movies with bigger screen size, but honestly do I really need a 200 GB disc. I was backing up all the data on my laptop about a month ago and it was a total of 19 GB. I would be glad to have a blue ray disc with 50 gigs of data for that than the alternate 4 dvds I had to use, but with a 60 GB hardrive I will never be able to fill a 200 GB disc up. Plus think how long it would take to burn, aren't these disc like 4x?

[Shadowself]

Originally Posted by sizzlemctwizzle

I can understand why companies would want a 200 GB Disc for better quality movies with bigger screen size, but honestly do I really need a 200 GB disc. I was backing up all the data on my laptop about a month ago and it was a total of 19 GB. I would be glad to have a blue ray disc with 50 gigs of data for that than the alternate 4 dvds I had to use, but with a 60 GB hardrive I will never be able to fill a 200 GB disc up. Plus think how long it would take to burn, aren't these disc like 4x?

Only 19 GB of data? You're fortunate. You definitely do NOT need 200 GB *now*. But if you had upgraded to a dual layer burner you would only have needed two disks to back up 19 GB not the four you used.

However, there are reports running around that Vista all by itself (absolutely no applications but what comes with Vista itself) runs between 8.5 GB and 18 GB (depending upon the specific installation). Microsoft's new Office 2007 is similarly much larger than its predecessor. The data files Office 2007 creates in the new formats supposedly take up much more space than earlier generation documents.

Many of us can remember owning (or at least running) systems which were 100% floppy based -- no hard drives. MS Word documents were often less than 20-30 kB. No new machine today will even allow you to do anything useful off of just floppies (booting, applicaitons and documents all on floppies).

While your 60 GB hard drive may seem huge today, in 5 years it definitely will not. In 5 years your 19 GB could easily expand to 50 - 100 GB.

[AV_Integrated]

Originally Posted by sizzlemctwizzle

I was backing up all the data on my laptop about a month ago and it was a total of 19 GB.

Geez! I've got more than that in porn alone.

[hagakure]

Originally Posted by AV_Integrated

Geez! I've got more than that in porn alone.

LOL true.

Aside from regular consumer, the 200GB disc will definitely help businesses backup their data. Business run a lot of data al the time. It will definitely have greater impact on the business side.

I don't think these 200GB disc will be use for regular hollywood movies.

[suprmallet]

Oh, I don't know, wouldn't it be nice to have the entire extended Lord of the Rings trilogy edited into one long film on one disc with commentaries, HD audio, and other extras?

Yeah, I know, I need a drool bib, too.

[Blackraven]

Although, I do admit that 200 GB discs are perfect for those films with trilogies and that you want to combine all of them in one disc.

LOTR Trilogy with Extended versions.

I guess this may work for me in the future since I DON'T like having multiple discs and to change them every single time.

One disc for all hehe.

[hmurchison]

Originally Posted by Blackraven

Although, I do admit that 200 GB discs are perfect for those films with trilogies and that you want to combine all of them in one disc.

LOTR Trilogy with Extended versions.

I guess this may work for me in the future since I DON'T like having multiple discs and to change them every single time.

One disc for all hehe.

200GB discs still don't make much sense. If I'm concerned about disc switching them the shortest path to bliss isn't an expensive 200GB disc but rather taking advantage of Managed Copy to pull the LotR Trilogy in all it's HD glorry to a HD. What a 250GB hard drive is $80 bucks or so..even lower after rebates. That's instant access to my movie.

200GB discs are a solution in search of a problem.

[BTBuck1]

I like the idea of having every episode of "knight rider" or "90210" on one disc. that imo is sweet and takes up less space on the dvd rack.

[theknub]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

200GB discs still don't make much sense. If I'm concerned about disc switching them the shortest path to bliss isn't an expensive 200GB disc but rather taking advantage of Managed Copy to pull the LotR Trilogy in all it's HD glorry to a HD. What a 250GB hard drive is $80 bucks or so..even lower after rebates. That's instant access to my movie.

200GB discs are a solution in search of a problem.

i'd argue that they make sense from a portability and cost standpoint. yes, managed copy and all that is great. but really, who has a PC with media centre (or whatever may be required) sitting next to their t.v. i know i don't. it's a heck of a lot easier lugging around a disc than a hard drive, let alone a computer. after all, hard drives and what not require more power while the disc requires just a player.

if i remember right hmurchison, you are all about price. if i want a media p.c. like this sitting next to my system, that is easily another $2k. assuming the movies are $30 on average, that is close to 67 movies i can purchase rather than a $2k system. go right ahead and put the movies on 200gb discs. that is a solution to a problem so to speak

[zombie]

Originally Posted by Brian@BBY

I like the idea of having every episode of "knight rider" or "90210" on one disc. that imo is sweet and takes up less space on the dvd rack.

The idea sounds nice but at what price?