Beyond Blu-Ray: 2,000 movies on one disc

[Zap!]

Just as we were all getting used to watching movies on Blu-Ray, Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia has developed a DVD that holds 1.6 terabytes of data — or about 2,000 movies. There is nothing like having your entire movie collection on one disc.

All this is made possible by adding a fourth and fifth dimension to an optical disc. By doing this, a range of different colored wavelengths can read the same physical location. Current DVDs use a red laser, while Blu-Ray DVDs naturally use a blue laser.

Researchers at Swinburne University say that a commercial release is still five years away, even though an exclusive agreement has already been signed with Samsung.

But will the everyday consumer need such a huge optical storage medium? Just think about the potential price of just one disc, let alone the player. The steeper price of Blu-Ray discs and players have hindered that technology from gaining a large share of the DVD market.

With hard drives exceeding 2TB and the future of movies heading towards digital downloads through services such as Netflix, the future of DVDs, especially Blu-Ray, may be in peril. On the other hand, you always will have the people who want a physical disc with a case and artwork so they can proudly display them.

Does the thought of having a 1.6TB disc excite you with its possibilities? Or do you cringe when you think about yet another new format that might force you to go out and buy “The Terminator” again for the fourth time?

http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/23 ... -one-disc/

[Rob]

My opinion? The disc companies/studios won't touch this with a ten foot pole. No way will consumers shell out 150.00 bucks for say, the entire eight seasons of Buffy The Vampire Slayer when it's on one disc, nor will the companies charge 40.00 for a single release when they can charge 80.00 per season. This is all just off the top of my head and there is other variables to work out, but I see this being something that only pirates/home archivists will latch onto.

The beauty of the DVD was that all the major studios entered into an agreement over the way they would be marketed. It was an unparalleled success, and the main reason was because since nobody was competing with each other and the tech was already there and standardized, it was cheap and easy to convert folks. It was like the Geneva Convention of home electronics.

Blu-Ray/HD DVD brought back that nasty ghost of the VHS/Betamax war of the early eighties. It, to me, was a step backwards in advancement. But then again, DVD over VHS was a no-brainer. Blu-Ray over DVD? Ehh, not that huge a difference in my eyes. Not enough to make me want to go out and replace my library. Hell, I still haven't replaced all my Laserdiscs with DVD's yet. Most of the LD's had a better sound quality (it was analog 2.0 or AC3- as advanced as the digital medium has become it still can't duplicate the frequencies of analog) and in several cases the print quality on Laser comes out better than later DVD releases. I can't even watch Alien on DVD because the image is so dark it's like watching a puppet show in a blackened theater. The Laserdisc transfer is positively stunning.

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but in terms of new and future technology I'm notoriously pessimistic. The idea of having my entire library on one disc is amazing, but I'm sure I'll find something to bitch about.