8 layer 200GB optical disc - Developed

[Sean Mota]

Ricoh Co. has developed technology that paves the way for the commercialization as early as 2008 of a 200-gigabyte optical disc, which could store 18 hours of high-definition television programming. This huge leap forward in recording capacity from the current single-layer DVD's 4.7GB is made possible by increasing the number of data recording layers to eight.


Entire Article

 

[korsjs]

more money for us to spend and a new format?

 

[Stargazer]

Right when you think they have a new format another new one comes along. Technology is changing so fast that it will be hard to keep up with at this point if they keep improving it this fast. They need to implement a recorder/player that will be compatable with future and multiple types of discs or a common form of one to where any improvements that are made can still be used in the current ones. I dont know if this would even be possible though.

 

[T2k]

It's already outdated - HVD, being developed by Optware, has a one terabyte disc prototype.

See Wiki's entry on HVD for more info.

 

[charper1]

Yep, looks promising to say the least.
http://www.manifest-tech.com/media_dvd/dvd_holo.htm

 

[dfergie]

Another article on Hvd... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/24/maxell_holo_storage/

 

[Stargazer]

If discs are going to be able to store this much information then we could use them to do DVR type of functionality couldn't we? That would hold a lot more than a hard drive be a lot cheaper. Many of these shows could be stored on one of these and you could access the different shows (files) off of that. If a hard drive fails you still have your shows. The hard drive could still be used for pausing, fast forward, rewind live/delayed functionality. One of these discs could be used for VOD. If files could be transmitted through the satellite in a compressed file to the receiver and record that content on such discs and uncompressed to be viewed then a LOT of content could be accessed by satellite (just like zipping a file then unzipping it).

I wonder what all the possibilities of such a large disc would be? One could hold some very large programs on it, a lot of HD shows/movies even.