HDV>Blu-Ray>HD-DVD

February 23, 2005 - As if Blu-ray and HD-DVD hasn\'t caused enough confusion, the Japanese firm Optware has a new optical disc in the works that leaves Blu-ray and HD in the dust when it comes to capacity and performance, not to mention price.

Last December, six firms -- CMC Magnetics Corporation, Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd., Nippon Paint Co., Ltd., Optware, Pulstec Industrial Co., Ltd. and Toagosei Co., Ltd. - formed the HVD Alliance to support the Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD). ECMA International has approved TC44 to discuss standardization HVD. The first TC44 meeting will be held in Tokyo on March 3.

Before you plan on replacing your DVD collection, know this: Optware doesn\'t expect to have HVD on the market for consumers until 2007 at the earliest, with players selling for under $3,000. You\'ll get your money\'s worth, though. The discs will hold between 100GB and up to one terabyte of data on a standard five-inch disc (the same size as a DVD) and support a data rate of up to one gigabit per second.

How does it work? Well, standard optical discs store data in a linear string of dots, each dot containing 1 bit of information, read by a laser beam. Optware\'s technology splits the signal laser beam into 1 million narrower beams to create data pages. This writes data in three dimensions, allowing for one million bits of information can be stored in each dot.

Optware\'s holographic recording technology stores data on discs in the form of laser interference fringes. Optware uses a holographic technology that combines multiple lasers needed to create a three-dimensional hologram into a single laser beam. The company also has a new servo system that allows for a smaller pickup size, allowing for compatibility with DVD and CD discs.



HVD reads and writes data at over 10kb with a single flash of the laser, and it can read and write in parallel, something optical discs can\'t do. Also, HVD discs don\'t need to spin like DVD discs, since the laser moves, rather than being held in place and having the disc spin under it.

This will allow for data cards, something Optware plans to do. Instead of limiting the format to a round disc, it can be stored on a card and the laser reads over the data layer. For this reason, HVD is seen as a storage system for a lot more than just holding movies. One credit card-sized card can hold gigabytes of personal information.

Because the disc doesn\'t need to spin, this will allow for tremendous read speeds. To increase the read speed in a ROM drive, CD or DVD, the disc must be spun faster. CD-ROM speed is limited by the fact that the disks would literally tear apart spinning at very high speeds. CD-ROM drives maxed out at 52x speed because if it spun the disc any faster it might shred.



This is not the first attempt at holographic optical storage. A few years back, a company called Constellation 3D attempted to do the same thing with its Fluorescent Multilayer Disc (FMD), which could have up to 100 layers on the disc. Constellation 3D has since gone bankrupt.

The company InPhase Technologies has began shipping a recordable holographic drive based on WORM (Write Once Read Many) technology and using a blue laser. The drives can hold from 200GB now to a projected 1.6TB by 2010. However, it\'s being sold to firms that need massive storage requirements and through computer vendors. If InPhase has any consumer ambitions, it hasn\'t announced them yet.

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I demand more storage!  What\'s more than a terabyte?

Originally posted by Ginko
I demand more storage!  What\'s more than a terabyte?

Two terabyte?

jigabyte

ONE POINT TWENTY ONE JIGAWATTS

Thats just plain awesome. A terabyte on one disk? That nuts.

wtf is a terabyte? bigger then a gig?

google must be broken

a terabyte is 1000 gigabytes

and 1000 terabytes is a petabyte

[GmanJoe]

Hexabyte > petabyte It\'s all numerical, really.

[Paul2]

How about Penis bit?  Or penisbyte?  is it going to be bigger than petabyte?

*goes to check it out*

[Evi]

Holographic Versatile Discs aren\'t going to be readily available for consumer use anytime in the near future. HD-DVD and Blu-ray is where we\'re headed in the upcoming years. Plus, HVD is mostly used for PC storage anyway, not High Definition video. But the discs hold a LOT of freakin\' space. :eek:

Did you just skip the article?  It says "Optware doesn\'t expect to have HVD on the market for consumers until 2007 at the earliest, with players selling for under $3,000."

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will have hardly made their entrance or made any kind of significant presence in the market at that time.  I really don\'t care as I\'ll be sticking with my DVD player until one of these new formats becomes the standard, something that won\'t happen for several years anyway.

[videoholic]

Actually I don\'t see HVD for consumers at all.  THere is just no reason for that much storage.  It\'s mainly for databases and crap on the corporate level.  I went to a seminar with Maxell a couple months ago and I thought I posted stuff about this back then.  Just no reason to have every episode of 24 on a single disc in HD.  Imagine if you scratched the disc?  I\'d much rather only have one movie on a disc.

[Evi]

Did you just skip the article? It says "Optware doesn\'t expect to have HVD on the market for consumers until 2007 at the earliest, with players selling for under $3,000."

Have fun buying a $3,000 player.

[Paul2]

I doubt it will be 1 Terabytes by 2007.  Maybe a couple hundred Gbytes.  Not Tbytes yet.

Maybe beginning of 2010, it will reach 1 Tbytes or over.  And that\'s where the transition from Blu Ray/HD-DVD to HVD comes into play.

I wouldn\'t mind uncompressed to lossless video compression in 1080p with higher color bandwidth that\'s comparable to 16 bits PC RGB instead of 12 bits PC RGB.  HVD will do just fine.  By then, there probably will be a lot of format war going on.

[videoholic]

Actually that\'s about right.  I wish I had some of the info from the meeting, but they only went out 3 years and that sounds right.

Originally posted by mm
a terabyte is 1000 gigabytes

and 1000 terabytes is a petabyte

Actually a terabyte is 1024 gigabytes and 1024 terabytes are a petabyte.