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halfbent
RealPoor Guru
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 2944
Location: Kentwood, Mi
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 Posted: 05/26/05 - 15:21 Post subject: Iomega kills Blu-ray?
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http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2005May/gee20050526030631.htm
| Quote: | Iomega patents 850GB optical disc
Who needs Blu-ray or HD-DVD anyway? posted 1:57pm EST Thu May 26 2005 - submitted by J. Eric Smith
NEWS
There's an old axiom -- revised for the technological age -- that states "data expands to fill all available space." For anyone trying to cram a few more bits of data into a storage space that never seems large enough, this is a common truism. 650MB CD-R's no longer seem as spacious as when they were introduced more than a decade ago. Recordable DVD's are large by comparison but still only store 4.5GB. This is pretty paltry when you consider the average hard drive these days is nearing 200GB in size. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD claim they want to save us with capacities around 100GB, but even that amount looks puny compared to what Iomega recently received a patent for. It's called "Articulated Optical DVD," and if Iomega is to be believed, you could find 850GB AO-DVD discs in the near future.
The "articulated" part of the technology is mostly what allows for the great increase in storage density. Using nanostructures, which are microscopic grid-like structures embedded in the DVD surface, AO-DVD would allow recording using reflectivity, polarization, phase, and reflective orientation multiplexing to encode the data. Current optical technologies rely almost exclusively on reflectivity information alone, meaning AO-DVD would have a much higher information density. Iomega refers to this recording technology as "multilevel" since information is stored using multiple properties in a single physical space. The idea was so novel, Iomega won a Nanotech Briefs' Nano 50 award, a recognition given to "the best of the best" in the nanotechnology industry.
Iomega is currently studying the technology with an eye towards mass production. The company claims AO-DVD media and recording/playback devices could be constructed at costs similar to or lower than existing DVD's.
PhysOrg has the best info on this, but if you're a true geek you can just read the patent.
ERIC'S OPINION
I remember when Iomega was the tour de force in removable storage. Anybody who was somebody had a Zip drive or, later, a Jaz drive. Unfortunately, Iomega also had a few duds like the Clik drive, and the rise of affordable CD-R's and DVD-R's pretty much sealed the fate of proprietary and expensive removable storage. Hard drives got too big compared to Iomega's itsy-bitsy 2GB max storage, and when you compare a 2GB Jaz cartridge to a 4.5GB DVD-R that costs under a dollar, it just doesn't make sense anymore.
This 850GB technology could be just what the company needs to get out front again. While Blu-Ray and HD-DVD batter each other senseless over MPAA requirements and format minutiae, Iomega could sneak up and make them both irrelevant in the PC space. If the price point is right, it could also displace expensive tape drives for backup.
Of course, all this is speculation. Iomega has neither drives nor media ready for production, and it may turn out to be unfeasible to do so at all. But imagine for a moment the utility of having nearly a terabyte of info available on a removable optical disc and you'll see why Iomega is probably going to pursue this quite vigorously. |
That's a shitload of storage..
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Paco
RealPoor Jedi
Joined: 13 Oct 2002
Posts: 12939
Location: Jacksonville, FL
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Posted: 05/26/05 - 15:50 Post subject:
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why yes, yes it is
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Nictathan
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 5531
Location: here... where I am... not with you
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Posted: 05/26/05 - 16:36 Post subject:
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God I'll take some of those please!
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halfbent
RealPoor Guru
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 2944
Location: Kentwood, Mi
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Posted: 05/26/05 - 17:09 Post subject:
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I remember having 250mb zip disks, those were slow as hell tho. 42 hours to burn one disc will be great!
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Occulis
RealPoor Jedi
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 13293
Location: Moral Relativity Central
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Posted: 05/26/05 - 17:50 Post subject:
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i just like all the f****n, ok
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Brael
RealPoor Guru
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 2122
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Posted: 05/27/05 - 00:55 Post subject:
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10 years from now were going to look back at 850gb of storage as being about as useful as a floppy is today.
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Frax
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 8489
Location: Fuck yoiu fucking fuckers
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Posted: 05/27/05 - 08:51 Post subject:
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I still have yet to burn anything to a DVD for personal use. At work we use them for some backups but thats about it.
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Paco
RealPoor Jedi
Joined: 13 Oct 2002
Posts: 12939
Location: Jacksonville, FL
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Posted: 05/27/05 - 09:20 Post subject:
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| Brael wrote: | | 10 years from now were going to look back at 850gb of storage as being about as useful as a floppy is today. |
in 10 years they'll have 850tb disks
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Nictathan
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 5531
Location: here... where I am... not with you
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Posted: 05/27/05 - 10:37 Post subject:
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| Frax wrote: | | I still have yet to burn anything to a DVD for personal use. At work we use them for some backups but thats about it. |
Today I burned two games and an expansion for each game to a DVD to bring to work for someone... they're useful for keeping CD images for multiCD games so that those images can just be mounted to a virtual drive.
Then there's the whole bit regarding movies.
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Ikkan
RealPoor Guru
Joined: 06 Sep 2003
Posts: 3086
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Posted: 05/27/05 - 10:39 Post subject:
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man I'll take ten, I mean one
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Brael
RealPoor Guru
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 2122
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Posted: 05/27/05 - 20:47 Post subject:
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| Paco wrote: | | Brael wrote: | | 10 years from now were going to look back at 850gb of storage as being about as useful as a floppy is today. |
in 10 years they'll have 850tb disks |
More than that.
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