Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 24 May 2009 18:15
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
All the brouhaha about Blu-ray needing to watch out because researchers have created a disc that can store 1.6TB of data today (and 10TB to come) is a bit of a load of bollocks, with the technology up to a decade away from commercialisation and even 10TB due to look teensy-weensy by then.
It’s been all over the news – a new “five-dimensional” recording system for DVD-sized discs that can store 1.6TB of data (compared with Blu-ray’s current 50GB limit), able to store 300 movies, 250,000 songs and leap tall buildings with a single bound.
It’s the death of Blu-ray, right? Hardly. Blu-ray is already being threatened not only by DVDs and upscaling players, but by downloads, both legal and illegal.
Sure, Blu-ray delivers the best quality at the moment, but as broadband speeds get faster with fibre projects underway and/or planned in different parts of the world (including, supposedly, Australia), HD movie downloads synchronised with their theatrical releases will become common.
Already a range of pay TV companies offer HD services and movies on demand, and Blu-ray is widely available to anyone that wants it, so getting content in HD is not the issue.
Physical storage is the issue, and a disc that can store terabytes of data would be a very handy thing, if it were available to consumers today.
The Swinburne University of Technology and Samsung scientists working on the 1.6TB disc admit that recording speeds are being worked on, which infers that recording 1.6TB on the special burner in the labs today is a relatively slow process.
The advances and discoveries these scientists have made do show how much more efficiently the space provided by a DVD-sized piece of plastic can be used to store much more information, with 10TB of data promised in future versions.
The thing is, although the scientists say the technology could be used in military, financial and medical arenas today, its commercialisation is supposed to be 5 to 10 years away.
What’s the large storage alternatives available today? After all, if you want space, time nor money needs to be your final frontier to getting it!
Please read on…
