Interesting new technology could increase BD capacity

[Clark Kent]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...y-tenfold.html

"So it turns out that Sony did something right and it, along with a large consortium of supporting folks, won the format war. Blu-ray is now the HD disc format of choice, but even so, the data storage capability won't keep users happy indefinitely. Some recent research from Northwestern University shows that much higher storage densities are possible using technology based on existing optical media."

"Two big questions remain: how much more data can be stored, and can the reader be be scaled down? If scaled directly, the pits would be approximately 50-80nm long, making the per-layer capacity a factor of two larger than current blu-ray discs. However, the depth encoding could easily provide another two to four times the capacity. Furthermore, this is the first experiment, so we can probably expect another factor of two to four from lessons learned during the development process—the optimist in me says that this could give us 30 times more data than a single layer disc."

They can call this SuperBlu...

[dk3dknight]

Sounds good when will you have it completed and how much!

[quaylie]

As long as it only needs firmware or no firmware at all to work in existing players, I like it.

[WickyWoo]

It would need a completely new laser head, and its still unknown if manufacturing them on a large scale is even practical

Like 99.9% of disc formats developed, this will likely never hit any consumer applications.

[CptGreedle]

It would prolly need a new head, but I can not say for sure. If it does still use the same laser, there might be a thin chance a firmware upgrade could fix this, but I don't think it will.
Anywho, this is not just around the corner, it is years away, so we should be fine with our 50 GB disc reading BD players.

[tron3]

Sony is getting ahead of themselves. Didn't they develop a BD33 disc by tweaking the BD25 a while back? Start with that. Firmware should easily fix players ability to read it.

While I am no fan of BD25, it is much better than HD DVD 15. BD33 is a step in the right direction. This super blu can wait until 2010. Get people used to ONE technology without scaring them off with a potential new technology.

Geeze, Sony. You beat Toshiba, don't shoot yourself in the foot now.

[blu2]

Originally Posted by tron3

Sony is getting ahead of themselves. Didn't they develope a BD33 disc by tweaking the BD25 a while back? Start with that. Firmware should easily fix players ability to read it.

While I am no fan of BD25, it is much better than HD DVD 15. BD33 is a step in the right direction. This super blu can wait until 2010. Get people used to ONE technology without scaring them off with a potential new technology.

Geeze, Sony. You beat Toshiba, don't shoot yourself in the foot now.

Sony started working on technology that would become Blu Ray way back in 2000 or so. It's only natural that they are looking at what comes next.

[tron3]

Originally Posted by blu2

Sony started working on technology that would become Blu Ray way back in 2000 or so. It's only natural that they are looking at what comes next.

I know, but geeze. All this mind share vaporware announced years in advance is just ridicules. It's like announcing another Star Wars movie before ANYTHING has been shot, so you use clips of the other movies to create a movie preview.

One thing I have learned about movie previews. The more I see of them the less the movie impresses me. Let's keep some mystery.

[Anthony P]

Sony is getting ahead of themselves

where does it say Sony? this is some researchers at Northwestern University.

I know, but geeze. All this mind share vaporware announced years in advance is just ridicules.

but there is no announcement, Ars Technica is a journal that caters to people that want to know every detail of technology and what different scientists are working on. Let’s face it, if you read the article all the scientists did was a prrof of concept model and are no where near even being ready in the lab for a try out.

[lch]

i thought sony is looking at the holographic technology ?

[Shadowself]

backwards compatibility.

This technology will absolutely require new optics/heads.

New disks specific to this methodology will allow significantly denser data on each layer. Thus "current generation" Blu-ray systems will not be able to read these denser disks. The spot size of the laser (due to the optics/heads on current systems) will be too large.

However, the real requirement will be backwards compatibility. If the come out with this system for the general public in 2010 (the earliest I'd expect it to be available to the general public) and it is able to read 100% of the current generation Blu-ray disks shipped up to that point then it may become a viable next generation.

Yet, one issue -- as has been debated on these boards for about as long as I've been here -- what does the average consumer need with something that has significantly more volume than a 50 GB BD? Does the average consumer really need 100 GB or 200 GB per disk? Maybe. Maybe not.

What I'd really like to see -- and may be an outgrowth of higher density systems such as this one discussed in this thread -- is higher peak rates (for both video and audio) allowed. A maximum of 48 Mbps is good, but for some shots/scenes 100 Mbps maximum would be much better. Maybe this new technology will allow that.