Sony Develops 25 GB Paper Disc 473
jaaron writes "TOPPAN Printing and Sony today announce the successful development of a 25GB paper disc based on Blu-ray Disc technology. Yes, that's right, *paper*. Details will be announced at the Optical Data Storage 2004 conference to be held from April 18th to April 21st at Monterey, California."
Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
GULP (Score:4, Funny)
Not any more..
*eject*
slashdotted (Score:2, Informative)
Tokyo, Japan, Apr 15, 2004 - (JCN Newswire) - TOPPAN PRINTING CO., LTD (TSE: 7911) and Sony Corporation (TSE: 6758) today announce the successful development of a 25GB paper disc based on Blu-ray Disc technology. Details will be announced at the Optical Data Storage 2004 conference to be held from April 18th to April 21st at Monterey, California.
Using the disc-structure of Blu-ray Disc technology, the new paper disc has a total weight that is 51% paper.
Re:slashdotted (Score:5, Funny)
sorry for that, i couldn't resist.
You know somebody will do this... (Score:4, Funny)
Personally? I can't wait until some sucker asks if they can borrow a Paper-Rom (or whatever we'll term them), and he hears a "Whumf!" coming from his drive after he starts trying to burn something to it.
Tech support nightmare... (Score:3, Funny)
'What do you mean?'
"I went to staples and picked up some computer paper and cut it into a disk shape and put it in and now there is a burning smell coming from the drive"
Wow! We've come so far! (Score:5, Funny)
Just think of what we can do now!
You could like....put a whole book or something on it!
Nah...that'll never work.
Re:Wow! We've come so far! (Score:3, Funny)
Now the Music Industry will have low cost media.. (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, isn't that the same... Oops, I forgot! I said Music Industry.
I meant that now AOL can reduce the price of their CDs.
Re:Now the Music Industry will have low cost media (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Now the Music Industry will have low cost media (Score:5, Funny)
more like AOL toilet paper
Re:Wow! We've come so far! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow! We've come so far! (Score:3, Interesting)
Just think of what we can do now!
Be careful at what you laugh at.
Data (other than print) has been stored on paper via bar codes. Some early programmable calculators (notably hp) used this to store programs.
Then came the SoftStrip [computercloset.org], a kind of 2d barcode that could store higher densities of data. It was used primarily by magazines in the late eighties to print programs that you could scan into your computer (most likely an apple II) rather than laboriously typing
Background... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Background... (Score:5, Insightful)
So there's just a tenth of a millimeter protecting the recording layer. And I thought I had issues with CD's getting scratched...well, at least there's the "hard coat". But wait, there's more!
Next section in the PDF says (emphasis mine):
The hard coat is optional. Wouldn't it be convenient for the manufacturers to release discs without the hard coat, that get easily scratched, that need to be re-purchased to be replaced?
Re:Background... (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be nice if they just sandwiched the media between two
Let's put in in perspective! (Score:3, Insightful)
Reliable? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems like they would be very easy to damage.
Re:Reliable? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Reliable? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Reliable? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Reliable? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Reliable? (Score:5, Funny)
Not by rocks though. Paper kicks rocks ass till both boots are shitty.
Re:Reliable? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Reliable? (Score:2)
Paper air planes. (Score:5, Funny)
We can send share data by throwing paper air planes at each other.
How cool is that?
No need for bathroom pause (Score:3, Funny)
There is no need to get up to go; as the movie is printed on its own toilet paper.
Re:That's the point. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually the Blu-Ray discs hold 25GB in a single sided, single layer medium. That's one of the reasons that they can use a paper disc, the laser beam doesn't have to travel beyond the initial recording medium to a second layer.
Just like Microsoft Office (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft Office has been succeptible to bloat for many years now. This wicking thing, that will be a new phenomemon.
Paper Eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Paper Eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Paper Eh? (Score:5, Funny)
I was expecting 3M! (Score:2)
Paper, I guess that "erasing data" has a whole new meaning now.
NICE (Score:2, Funny)
Ah, hell (Score:5, Funny)
paper, scissors, fuck... (Score:2)
Since the disc is made out of paper, and the current number of optical discs is about 20 billion per year, it is easy to use even more trees.
Since a paper disc can be cut by anything easily, it is simple to destroy data when handling the disc.
Re:paper, scissors, fuck... (Score:4, Insightful)
On a side note - man, the Japanese are really good at making things out of wood and paper, aren't they?
Renewable Resource? (Score:4, Insightful)
At the rate things are going, however, we're likely to run out of both at about the same time.
With trees, there's also the factor that forests are a good deal more than just trees, and trees do more than just stand there (like oil generally does). Problem is that nobody ever managed to put a price on oxygen manufacturing, pollution abatement, flood/drought/weather moderation or many of the other things that forests do.
Punchcard (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Punchcard (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Punchcard (Score:3, Funny)
Ordered stacks of punch cards are a major reason why Computer Science spends so much time on sorting algorithms.
Big Deal. (Score:5, Funny)
SIX Sided cheat sheet! (Score:3, Interesting)
Last year my 30 year old daughter informed me of how much data a 7th grade student could put on the six sides of a new yellow pencil. From a few feet away it looks like it has been chewed on so the teacher asks no questions. Use only three sides and it even stays hidden when you put the pencil down.
If IBM had been able to use this technology, no telling how much data they could have put on paper disks! About 2 gigs along the edge even.
Re:SIX Sided cheat sheet! (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was in 5th grade, I used a similar trick for a test in which we had to name all the states and their capitals. Rather than spend 4 weeks memorizing those useless facts, I simply wrote them on my pencil in the format of "Sacramento, California" = "SAC-CA". My prototype pencil turned out to be too obvious, though, so I then created a modified alphabet that only I could read. I probably spent more time refining that alphabet than it would have taken me to memorize the stupid state capitals, but in the end the alphabet was a better investment. I was for years able to use it as a "plain sight" type cheat-sheet font, whereby I could write out names, dates, or other mnemonic reminders on (say) the paper cover of a history book and leave it in plain sight next to my desk. To anyone else it looked like meaningless scratchings. I managed to get through YEARS of school without having to learn anything! ;)
Re:SIX Sided cheat sheet! (Score:3, Funny)
Paper? (Score:2, Funny)
Your warez stash being raided? Eat the evidence!!
I wonder how this new disc would deal with heat, though. Since most reading devices--and just being inside a closed space--produces heat. Heat and paper aren't necessarily a Good Thing.
darn (Score:2, Funny)
Paper disk... (Score:5, Funny)
A paper disk huh?
Sounds like yet another Sony product to wipe our asses with...
picture of disc (Score:5, Funny)
The dinosaurs used these too (Score:2, Funny)
Coasters! (Score:2)
This would be very cool! The idea of dumps full of plastic disks is a bit disheartening.
Site is blocking by referrer! (Score:4, Informative)
TOPPAN and Sony Successfully Develop 25GB Paper Disc
Tokyo, Japan, Apr 15, 2004 - (JCN Newswire) - TOPPAN PRINTING CO., LTD (TSE: 7911) and Sony Corporation (TSE: 6758) today announce the successful development of a 25GB paper disc based on Blu-ray Disc technology. Details will be announced at the Optical Data Storage 2004 conference to be held from April 18th to April 21st at Monterey, California.
Using the disc-structure of Blu-ray Disc technology, the new paper disc has a total weight that is 51% paper. The two companies jointly began this optical disc project approximately a year ago. Blu-ray Disc is commonly known for allowing more than 2 hours of high-definition program recording.
Hideaki Kawai, Managing Director, Head of Corporate R&D Division, TOPPAN CO., LTD commented: "Using printing technology on paper allows a high level of artistic label printing on the optical disc. Since a paper disc can be cut by scissors easily, it is simple to preserve data security when disposing of the disc".
Masanobu Yamamoto, Senior General Manager of Optical System Development Gp., Optical Disc Development Div., Sony Corporation said: "Since the Blu-ray Disc does not require laser light to travel through the substrate, we were able to develop this paper disc. By increasing the capacity of the disc we can decrease the amount of raw material used per unit of information."
The worldwide production of optical discs is approximately 20 billion per year and optical discs are being adopted widely. The combination of paper material and printing technology is also expected to lead to a reduction in cost per disc and will expand usage.
TOPPAN and Sony will continue development of the disc for practical use.
About Sony Corporation
Sony Corporation (TSE: 6758) is a leading manufacturer of audio, video, game, communications, key device and information technology products for the consumer and professional markets. With its music, pictures, computer entertainment and on-line businesses, Sony is uniquely positioned to be the leading personal broadband entertainment company in the world. Sony recorded consolidated annual sales of approximately $62 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2003. For further information, please visit the Sony Corporation home page at: www.sony.net/
About Toppan Printing Co Ltd.
Toppan Printing Co., Ltd. (TSE: 7911), since its founding in 1900, has played key roles in worldwide leadership of the printing industry, generated global acclaim and US$10 billion in revenues. Today, the Company's operations extend beyond conventional lines of printing and show strong performances in each field, including securities and cards, commercial printing, publications printing, packaging, industrial materials,and electronics. Especially in the electronics field, Toppan boasts the largest share of the world market for liquid-crystal color filters. For further information, please visit the Toppan Printing Co Ltd. home page at: www.toppan.co.jp/english/
Contact:
Sony Corporation
Gerald Cavanagh
Gerald.Cavanagh@jp.sony.com
Tel: +81-3-5448-2200; Fax: +81-3-5448-3061
Of course the question that comes to mind is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Of course the question that comes to mind is... (Score:5, Informative)
Paper doesn't really decompose unless it's subjected to bacteria, air, water, dirt and stuff.
High quality paper, such as wood-free paper doesn't even yellow much in sunlight.
(Wood-free? You say.. that's paper which is 100% cellulose, with no lignin in it.. lignin is the stuff that separates trees from plants.. without lignin, it's not wood, hence 'wood-free' paper.)
In a good environment (as one could expect for this kind of purpose) paper should have a far greater life-span than any hard drive I've ever owned.
(and I've held on to some of mine for quite some time)
Re:Of course the question that comes to mind is... (Score:3, Funny)
not-wet water
My head is starting to hurt.
How many paper discs would you need... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh no (Score:3, Funny)
Interesting (Score:4, Funny)
I think we decided it would get interesting if full color was used and different colors meant different binary combos.
Anyway, good on them if the discs can be made for cheaper than current DVDs.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
300 dpi is 300x300 dots per square inch.
You have 8.5 x 11 square inches.
That means you have 300x300x8.5x11 dots per page.
What's your encoding mecanism?
If you forget error detector and recovery, divide by 8 and you have byte. Divide by 1024 and you have real kilobytes, then by 1024 and you have real MB, (but given that we are trying to sell thing scheme, divide it by 1,000 and 1,000,000 respectively to give Marketing Bytes).
Given the low quality of the media, I'd be inclined to use 10bit bytes to allow double bit error detection and single bit error recovery. This also makes the maths easier.
So you end up with 300x300/10 = 9000 bytes = 9k per square inch, and 840k per page. Make a double sided version and yo have nearly 1.7MB.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
2880 dpi is 2880x2880 dots per sqaure inch
You have 8.5 x 11 square inches (or pi * 2^2 for a cd sized area)
You have 7 individual colors so lets count a dot for each, and lets go with no error correction (just to get a maximum conceivable).
You end up with 14M / square inch, a big improvement over 9k!
That would give you 1.3G / double sided page, or 182M / double sided cd size.
So Sony's tech here is nearly as big a leap up again as from 300x300dpi@1bit to 2880x2880dpi@7bit! It's a long way from printing quality (forget the fact that you would need to be incredibly redundant to make it any use, forget 10 bit bytes, i'd be thinking 64 bit bytes if it's meant to be lossless storage on the scheme I outlined). Might be fun to try and print out and scan back in say a knoppix cd in as few pages as possible, "what you mean you don't have a cd drive
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Informative)
This also discounts bleed, cueing and error correction.
Cheap demos? Cheaper "throwaway" movies? (Score:5, Insightful)
But getting on an airplane, and instead of "renting" a movie, I just but the cheap $2.00 one. This is what DiVX could have been without the annoying DRM and phone calling back method.
If I want to try out a game, such as "Jak and Daxter 14: Goatees for Everybody", I could get the cheap $5 full version paper demo, try it out, and when the disk finally breaks down say "Well, I can either buy another $5 version and finish the game, or pay $30 for the full version".
Either way, Sony doesn't come across looking evil, and I get what I want.
Re:Cheap demos? Cheaper "throwaway" movies? (Score:3, Funny)
"oooh. that's nasty"
oh wait, goaTEES.
Steven V.
Forgot? (Score:3, Informative)
Note, that's not to be confused with the DivX standard used by those nasty "pirates". There are other types of disposable DVDs floating around. The main one that comes to mind now is the one that oxidizes when you open the package.
Anyway, it especially pissed off the Slashdot crowd.
have you been living under a rock? (Score:5, Insightful)
if it was possible, you could come up with digital video disks made from cow chips, and they would still charge the same price for a movie.
Cow Chips == Hollywood? (Score:4, Funny)
if it was possible, you could come up with digital video disks made from cow chips, and they would still charge the same price for a movie.
You haven't seen much of what's come out of Hollywood lately, have you?
damn.....thx alot...now I can't... (Score:2)
Somebody has to say it... (Score:5, Funny)
The worldwide production of optical discs is approximately 20 billion per year and optical discs are being adopted widely.
What is it minus AOL?
Extending this thread, it's too bad Sony didn't work on this with P The "Bounty" version of the AOL disk could pre-emptively clean up those annoying coffee drips and the "Charmin" version, well the AOL disks would finally actually be useful.
myke
RPS! (Score:5, Funny)
Now all we need is a Rock based disk and a Scissors based disk. Then have them fight it out for world dominance.
"good old rock, nothing beats rock!"
Re:RPS! (Score:4, Funny)
Commodore 1541 Disk Drive (Score:5, Funny)
It did not record to paper plates.... (Score:5, Informative)
My wording could have been more clear. The 1541 ACTED like it formatted a paper plate. You'd have to cut the plate, or other piece of cardboard to size, place it in the drive, and then run the format operation. This would proceed and conclude with no error message. This does not mean that the resulting paper disc was ready for Commodore data storage!
49% Not paper... (Score:2, Informative)
Its kinda like saying WinBlows is better then Linux, but after reading the fine print: "the systems were judged by 100 people, 51 being microsoft employees..."
Yes its paper under the text books (congrats on pulling it off) but then again its also 49% not paper, probably good old plastics...
YES!! Now I can... (Score:2, Funny)
Paper hmm? Let's see (Score:2)
John inserts the paper disk into his 32x CDrom, waits for it to spin up, then promptly evacuates the building when his machine erupts in flames.
Paper, Scissors... err (Score:5, Funny)
Yep. Scissors cut paper disc, paper disc cuts fingers, fingers bleed on scissors, causing them to rust.
Longevity? (Score:2)
Dilbert, always ahead of the curve (Score:5, Funny)
Disk management (Score:2, Funny)
NO! Don't throw away that paper! (Score:2)
Porn (Score:2)
Disc Burning (Score:5, Funny)
They finally find (Score:2)
Finally (Score:5, Funny)
Now my new set of AOL coasters will be absorbant!
Capacity is expected to double... (Score:5, Funny)
Environmentally friendly? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
What possible benefit does this present. Someone help me out.
rental stores (Score:3, Funny)
"paper or plastic"
The next phase in paper-encoding.... (Score:5, Funny)
Sheets of paper encoded like this could be cut square (most efficient use of space) and then bound by the edge so datasets larger than one-sheet's-worth could be looked at in a sequential fashion.
These things are likely to be kind of bulky; if it ever takes off, there might be public buildings where people could borrow from a large repository of these paper-encoded datasets.
This is kind of mind-boggling; it is likely to be years before Sony or anyone else takes it to this next step.
More Info on the Blu-ray Disc Technology (Score:3, Interesting)
Large recording capacity up to 27GB:
By adopting a 405nm blue-violet semiconductor laser, with a 0.85NA field lens and a 0.1mm optical transmittance protection disc layer structure, it can record up to 27GB video data on a single sided 12cm phase change disc. It can record over 2 hours of digital high definition video and more than 13 hours of standard TV broadcasting (VHS/standard definition picture quality, 3.8Mbps)
How far we've come (Score:3, Funny)
roll a fat one (Score:5, Funny)
Forget double sided (Score:5, Funny)
LoC (Score:3, Funny)
Audio encoding advances? (Score:5, Funny)
The music industry is working on a new type of CD. It is not that compact, actually: I am guessing that the "medium pizza" size is to make it difficult to actually steal from music stores.
The discs are black, and instead of being encoded with laser-readable bits, the surface is covered with one very long spiralled indentation (or groove). Information engraved in this indentation can be read through a tiny stylus and converted into sound.
To further thwart the digital p2p "rip and post it on Kazaa" world, the audio technology is actually analog instead of digital.
The technology required to burn these things is rather bulky and expensive. Prototypes have been produced by a new audio company called "Decca" (Digital Encoding Concern Company - Advanced), some of the prototypes have turned up at garage sales. These are typically stamped with very old dates (1938? 1941?) to confuse people.
Latest technology in DMCA circumvention... (Score:3, Funny)
-JT
Re:Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Cheech and Chong "Up in Smoke" (Score:4, Funny)
You mean.... your illicit copy of "Cheech and Chong Up in Smoke"... up in smoke?
Re:Will they call the 50GB (Score:5, Funny)