1 Terabyte Optical Storage Disks 266
fenimor writes "Physicists at Imperial College London described a new method for potentially encoding and storing up to one Terabyte of data, or 472 hours of film, on one optical disk the size of a CD or DVD. Maybe it won't be as large, as 100TB holographic optical storage, but still should be enough to fit every episode of The Simpsons on one disk. Dr Török, Lecturer in the Department of Physics, believes that the first disks could be on the shelves between 2010 and 2015."
Surprise surprise... (Score:5, Funny)
*sigh*
Re:Surprise surprise... (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Surprise surprise... (Score:2)
If only you did need 1 terabyte to store Family Guy...damn cancellation.
I'd have to agree. (Score:4, Interesting)
Come to think of it, properly compressed one such disk could probably store the complete works of the Simpsons, Futurama AND South Park and have room to spare--without noticeable degredation in picture and sound quality.
Lets use our imaginations--with high-density storage like this, consumer-grade equiment of the future could store amazing virtual worlds right down to the last twig and blade of grass...
Re:I'd have to agree. (Score:2)
(I know MPEG streams can only go down to about 24 fps, it's all about frame type orders and using a lot of the type that repeat frames)
Get yours before they're gone! (Score:5, Funny)
>the first disks could be on the shelves between 2010 and 2015.
Which means EB Games should start taking pre-orders right about now...
I keed, I keed....
Re:Get yours before they're gone! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Get yours before they're gone! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Get yours before they're gone! (Score:5, Informative)
Moore's law [wikipedia.org] is an empirical observation stating, in effect, that at our rate of technological development and advances in the semiconductor industry, the complexity of integrated circuits doubles every 18 months.
Re:Get yours before they're gone! (Score:2)
Even Commodore 64s had drive logic.
Re:Get yours before they're gone! (Score:5, Informative)
It seems that it takes about ten years for hard drive capacity to multiply by ten. That means a doubling of drive capacity approximately every three years. By 2010, there might be 1.6TB drives. By 2015, people might be buying 5TB hard drives. A 1TB optical disc might not be too bad during that time frame.
The problem is that many of these projects die in their infancy. The last big one I remember was Constellation 3D's FMD, but I really wasn't sure the claimed material science of flourescents / phosphorescence was real on that one, it was hard to distinguish it from a fully vapor project.
Re:Get yours before they're gone! (Score:2, Interesting)
Hard drive capacity doubled every 24 months before the discovery of the magnetoresistive effect. After the discovery of the giant magnetoresistive effect, the growth cycle sped up yet again to its current 9 months.
Re:Get yours before they're gone! (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:Get yours before they're gone! (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, hard drive storage densities are increasing much more quickly than that.
I've been tracking hardware price trends for a few years [216.229.97.45], and hard drive data densities have increased exponentially, but on a changing exponent.
From the late 1980's to the mid 1990's, the rate was about 1.6x per year. Around 1996 the annual rate of increase climbed to 1.8x, then 2.0x, to a peak of about 2.2x/year until the "dot bomb" around 2001, which knocked it down to 1.4x for a while. It has since climbed back up to
Re:Get yours before they're gone! (Score:2, Interesting)
20-100GB is enough for most people's MP3 collection, and I think that is really what drove that boom in hard disk size increases we saw from 1996-2001.
MP3 really was the killer app driving hard disk sales during that period. During the couple years before that, they were driven by people wanting to run Windows 95, maybe with an onl
Re:Get yours before they're gone! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Get yours before they're gone! (Score:3, Insightful)
So if you extrapolate to 2004, 100x 200 GB is about 20TB in 2014. 2010 I'd expect about 5TB. The 1TB harddisks should appear around 2007/2008.
Re:Get yours before they're gone! (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember Moore's Law?
Do you?
Re:Get yours before they're gone! (Score:2)
wow (Score:5, Funny)
Just in time (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Just in time (Score:2)
Seriously, when the fuck is that game coming out?
Re:Just in time (Score:3, Funny)
Weaseling (Score:5, Funny)
"Maybe"? Really, now - I think you can confidently commit yourself to the proposition that 100 > 1...
Re:Weaseling (Score:5, Funny)
Wait till a standards body gets a hold of the tech (Score:5, Funny)
How appropriate (Score:5, Funny)
How appropriate. I can already hear anti-piracy people say D'oh!
Re:How appropriate (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How appropriate (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Licensing non-sense for legacy audio-visual media goes away. Napster/Gnutella is a 60lb weakling compared to the Gorilla of 1 terrabyte optical storage. At today's prices, it makes sense for me to fly from Toronto to California, burn a few TV series of shows onto a disc, and fly back home -- it would be cheaper. Also, broadcast T
Re:How appropriate (Score:3, Insightful)
Just like nobody buys old black and white movies anymore?
Also, broadcast TV really beings to lose its luster when I have 20,000 hrs of video sitting on its shelf at home. I have 500 channels today, and its 99% garbage. I'd be much better off buying the shows i like in a static format, but the price point isn't quite there yet.
Theoretically, it should never be there. Broadcasting should always be cheaper than distri
472 hours of _film_ ? (Score:5, Informative)
At 2k, it's a much lengthier 55 minutes or so
Saying things like 472 hours of video is fairly meaningless without saying what KIND of video.
Re:472 hours of _film_ ? (Score:4, Insightful)
And somehow i dont think a film camera doing 24fps can archive the same quality.
Yes, you can scan it with that resolution, but you could scan it with 16k, too. There is just no (or little) more information in your 4k scan than in a 2k scan.
I know you are nitpicking, but you could also claim that 3d is mission, what about ir und uv, ectect.
Re:472 hours of _film_ ? (Score:2)
This 1TB number is truly unimpressive. It serves more as a reminder that (2D) optical has a limited future due to nasty things like wavelength, rather than as a technology to lust over.
Re:472 hours of _film_ ? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:472 hours of _film_ ? (Score:3, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:472 hours of _film_ ? (Score:3, Funny)
"Saying things like 472 hours of video is fairly meaningless without saying what KIND of video."
That's why we here at slashdot usually use real units, like Libraries of Congress. The editor must have messed up.
Re:472 hours of _film_ ? (Score:2)
For digital post, it's 2K --2048x1556.
Re:472 hours of _film_ ? (Score:3, Funny)
*ducks*
krrraazzy (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:krrraazzy (Score:2)
Doesn't make me wrong though
Disc, not Disk (Score:5, Informative)
Hence Compact Disc, Digital Versatile Disc.
Re:Disc, not Disk (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Disc, not Disk (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Disc, not Disk (Score:3, Informative)
Now, what about magneto-optical?
Sorry to be pedantic, but it would be a disk (or a cartridge). Current optical media are labelled discs because of the physical format. (For example, 3 1/2 inch floppies disks contain a magnetic disc inside their sleeve.) Hard disks use disc-shaped platters on a spindle.
Re:+1 Informative (Score:2)
before it gets totally slashdotted.... (Score:2, Informative)
Physicists at Imperial College London are developing a new optical disk with so much storage capacity that every episode of The Simpsons made could fit on just one. Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Data Storage Conference 2004 in Taiwan today, Dr Peter Török, Lecturer in Photonics in the Department of Physics, will describe a new method for potentially encoding and storing up to one Terabyte (1,000 Gigabytes) of data, or 472 hours of film, on one optical disk the size of a CD or DVD.
Physi
measurement units (Score:5, Funny)
Re:measurement units (Score:5, Funny)
Re:measurement units (Score:2)
Well, two observations.
1. Your website is really damned funny in this context.
2. Does this metric you propose include her comps?
Re:measurement units (Score:2)
Because it grows at about the same rate as hard drive space?
Re:measurement units (Score:5, Funny)
Height of small objects: Pepsi/Coke cans
Height of medium objects: Two storey family home
Height of large buildings and astronomical objects: Statues of Liberties or Taj Mahal's
Volume of medium-sized objects: Ford pickup truck/Indian bull elephant
Volume of large objects: Superbowl stadium/Oil tanker
Volume of extremely large objects: Planet Earth
Slow speed objects: Garden snail
Medium speed objects: Grand Prix racing car
High speed objects: Artillery shell/Rifle bullet
Most if not all of these objects can be found around or near the typical family dwelling home.
Well, (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well, (Score:3, Funny)
If George Lucas is involved then they will change it so Mr. Burns will have fired the first bullet when Maggie shoots him in the Who shot Mr. Burns episode.
Re:Well, (Score:3, Funny)
obligatory . . . (Score:2)
Who cares (Score:2, Insightful)
Blueray is the guaranteed next step up from DVD, and the consumers have yet to hold anything in their hands.
Seems like a waste of article space on slashdot.
Who needs it? (Score:3, Insightful)
By then, I'm planning on the entire global computer network to be seemlessly linked and networked so that I no longer need to save it locally, or back it up to disk. Distributed storage will have a whole new meaning.
That way, only one person has to have the entire Simpsons...or only one person has to have the pr0n if you prefer.
I'm only kidding of course...but who's to say that 1TB is even going to be worth having in another 6 years? I expect to carry that in my pocket on a pen drive by then.
New Format??? Oh No (Score:5, Funny)
Re:New Format??? Oh No (Score:2)
Simpsons anthologies? (Score:4, Funny)
Ob Microsoft Putdown (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ob Microsoft Putdown (Score:2, Funny)
That's sooo last month... (Score:3, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/25/16392
Optware -- the company claiming to have done this a month ago -- has a press release available at:
http://www.optware.co.jp/english/what_040823.htm [optware.co.jp]
Professor predicts product probability? (Score:5, Funny)
Call me when it's out of the Uni and into a corporation's lab, then we can talk.
The MPAA cannot allow this. (Score:5, Funny)
They must get Congress to out law this. At the same time, maybe they should have copyrights extended to 200 years instead of the puny 75 years. 75 years is not enough time for the copyright holders to recoup their investments and 200 years will encourage the creative people to produce more creative works.
Re:The MPAA cannot allow this. (Score:2, Informative)
Simpsons did it! (Score:3, Funny)
Ooh! (Score:3, Interesting)
Great! So this means I can store all the stuff I need to know for my degree on a disc that one of my lecturers in the department has developed? So if I set up a video camera at the back of the lecture theatre, set it to record...
Say fifteen hours of lectures a week, for 25 weeks of lectures, that makes 375 hours of lectures this year... Should just do it.
Ah, extensive lie-ins await.
Yes, I study Physics at Imperial. Yes, Dr Torok is one of my lecturers. Yes, I should be posting this anonymously.
In 5 to 10 years? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll be installing a Terabyte Disk player in the dashboard for sure!
It's the transfer rate stupid (Score:2, Interesting)
That should keep your average desktop busy in 2010! And picture doing this over a LAN or WAN.
Cool! (Score:2)
It's too bad Duke Nukem Forever is coming out before either, or it could fit on just one of these discs.
Two leading innovation accelerators. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Two leading innovation accelerators. (Score:2, Insightful)
What's REALLY next for optical? (Score:5, Interesting)
The only products that appear likely to actually hit the market for real are Blu-Ray and its competitor, DVD-HD (which seems kind of dead in the water as a data storage standard due to its limited size and growth). Blu Ray appears to have some legs from what I've read, due to its layer growth capability.
What's after that? Are there any storage standards backed by large consortiums coming after Blu Ray? Or is multi-layer blu ray supposed to be "good enough" until some of this lab stuff makes it to market in 2015?
Ideal for Star Wars 50th edition (Score:2, Funny)
Don't lose it! (Score:2, Funny)
Site is dead (Score:2)
Is anybody going to care about optical? (Score:2, Interesting)
Isn't the unit of storage the movie? Or the CD collection? Once I can put all of that on a hardware device for the cost of a cheeseburger, what the heck do I want to be carrying around disks for?
Longevity (Score:5, Interesting)
After all, who wants to spend one week a year doing quality assurance on media. And even if you do QA, what if you find something is bad. While you can re-download your warez and pr0n, the photos and videos of your family vacation will be lost forever.
Great (Score:5, Funny)
472 hours of video on a terabyte (Score:5, Informative)
Implying a compression ratio of 1:25 when talking about storage doesn't help the quality of the information.
Re:472 hours of video on a terabyte (Score:2)
Hmm , call me a cynic but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Typical slashdot humor (Score:3, Funny)
65% pr0n jokes
10% microsoft jokes
10% star wars jokes
8% duke nukem forever jokes
5% white album jokes
2% slashdot humor jokes
Nothing New Here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Dr. Torok? (Score:2, Funny)
1. Dr. Torok is vulcan and this is the first seeding of Vulcan technology (apart from the T'Pol grandmother selling velcro to Americans in the 1950's).
2. Isn't Torok that caveman stuck in the futuristic jumping / FPS game? He's certainly progressed.
JP
Extreme HDTV (Score:2)
10 hours tv per day ones whole life (Score:2)
Does anyone know the total amount of network and cable TV archives?
Oh great... (Score:2)
That's nothing compared to the feeling you'll get with 1TB discs.
mass storage (Score:2, Interesting)
Single standard... (Score:3, Insightful)
Establish a single format and make everybody happy!
Coral Cache (Score:3, Informative)
a new method [nyud.net].
holographic optical storage [nyud.net]
Caught it about 90secs before it started intermittently saying "PhysOrg is temporarily unavailable."
Re:/.ed (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't have the text of the article, but I did RTFA. The FA doesn't specify:
Re:woah! uberporn! (Score:2)
And boy, do they ever make it.
Re:woah! uberporn! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:woah! uberporn! (Score:2)
Re:Lovely... (Score:2)
Amazon has had each one for $33 I think...so it's not quite a car payment for some of us.
But don't worry, that is one car payment spread out over at least 6 years! Your car will be paid off by then!
Re:Physical limits (Score:2, Informative)