Blu-ray takes aim at data centres

Ilya

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TDK working on 100GB Blu-ray discs for the storage sector
Iain Thomson, vnunet.com 31 Jan 2006

While Sony's PlayStation 3 might well be the first Blu-ray device most consumers see, industry supporters of the technology are setting their sights much higher.

TDK, one of the key supporters of the next-generation DVD format, told vnunet.com that it will be making a major play for the storage sector, both through direct sales and via the network of specialist storage resellers and value-add resellers.

"Our target markets are the authoring and pre-mastering sectors," said Jean-Paul Eekhout, corporate strategy director at TDK, and vice chairman of the European Blu-ray PR committee.

"Data storage is going to be key, and maybe jukebox systems. There's also an underestimated market for video enthusiasts getting into high definition recording."

TDK already has 50GB Blu-ray discs in production and has built engineering samples of 100GB discs, although these are not expected to go into production until 2007.

Early prices for the media are high, however. Eekhout estimated that 25GB recordable discs would cost around €25, and 50GB recordable discs will initially be around €25-€30 at launch in the spring.

But prices for Blu-ray media would drop to within 10 per cent of current DVD costs once TDK reached full production, according to Eekhout.

Initially five companies will be launching PC Blu-ray burners, including Samsung, Sony and Philips. Current write speeds are limited to 2x, but Eekhout predicted that this would rise to 8x and beyond in the future.
 
And frikkin expensive.
And totally non-reliable.
And very limited capacity.

This is pure BS. TDK is in full force BSing mode, apparently - check those screamingly stupid claims about 'hard coat-with-thinner laye4r-is-good-but-expensive-but-it-won't-be-for-the-customer' (right, TDK is a charity org...) etc etc.

Anybody, who knows a little bit about archiving and data centers, will immediately know it's pure BS, on multiple accounts.

It's slow like hell: 72Mbps... utter crapola. 2x Blu-Ray writing is slower than a nowadays average 8x regular DVD writing, folks: 72Mb/s vs 88Mb/s... pathetic. Just to give you some prospective: LTO3 (Ultrium3) has 80MB/160MB/s write speed... yes: megabit versus megabyte - go figure... :D the BSing about 8x speed... it is expected to be available sometime in 2007 but even that won't help too much: that'd be still 35MB/s...

Its capacity is a piece of crap: an average-use LTO3 has 400GB/800GB native/compressed capacity PER TAPE. Imagine that we have a ~100-tape library in our server room...

Its price/performance ratio is the worst on the market: even if skip TDK's obvious price-cosmetics, it's still about the same price like the above mentioned 400GB native Ultrium3 tape...

Ehh, it's useless, the worst idea for backup/archival, no matter what. :(
 
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Actually it is hard to say atm without product to test. A thin hard coat could be harder to damage than a thicker layer on HDDVD.

DVD has archive stability estimated at 75-100years for some brands. Of course what will be around to read it then?

For around the house I would not be interested in a tape drive again. If you are going to be backing up a data center with terrabytes you will not be using HD-DVD or BlueRay. But, for home users it could be ideal.
 
mike123abc said:
Actually it is hard to say atm without product to test. A thin hard coat could be harder to damage than a thicker layer on HDDVD.

Ah, c'mon. TDK is making these ridiculous claims - that 'magic' coat originally was supposed to be in mass manuf. by last October... then end of the year... then February... now it's around Spring or Summer...

Everything is a big BS around this Blu-Ray camp - they are clearly in full panic mode, Toshiba really scared the sh*t out of them with its $499 initial HD-DVD price.

DVD has archive stability estimated at 75-100years for some brands. Of course what will be around to read it then?

I'm not aware of any DVD with 100 years warranty - and it's quite interesting to claim when DVD is about a decade old only.

For around the house I would not be interested in a tape drive again. If you are going to be backing up a data center with terrabytes you will not be using HD-DVD or BlueRay. But, for home users it could be ideal.

For $1000, I'm sure it'll be ideal... ;)
Iomega's REV drive comes with 6 pcs of 35gb/90GB native/compressed capacity disks for around $4-500 - half the price of your future standalone drive which is slower and has lower error correction tolerance...
 
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