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Author
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Topic: 472 hours of film on one DVD?
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Dick Vaughan
Phenomenal Film Handler
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Posts: 1032
From: Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 09-28-2004 05:15 AM
This article click here appeared on BBC online news today. quote: DVDs could hold '100 times more' All the episodes of The Simpsons could fit on one disk Future DVDs could hold 100 times more information than current discs. Imperial College London researchers in the UK are developing a new way of storing data that could lead to discs capable of holding 1,000 gigabytes.
It means that every episode of The Simpsons could fit on a disc the size of a normal DVD.
Lecturer Dr Peter Torok revealed the technique called Multiplexed Optical Data Storage (Mods) at the Asia-Pacific Data Storage Conference 2004 in Taiwan.
472 hours of film
DVDs are the single most successful consumer product in history. Most DVDs have two layers and can hold up to 8.5GBs.
We came up with the idea for this disc some years ago, but did not have the means to prove whether it worked
Peter Torok, Imperial College Work is already well advanced on the next generation.
One technology, HD-DVD (High Definition DVD), can hold up to 30GBs, while a rival format called Blu-ray offers 50GBs of storage.
The technique developed by the Imperial College team could offer much more on a disc.
The researchers believe their technique could be used to create a disc with four layers, each with 250GBs - the equivalent of 118 hours of video per layer.
A four-layer DVD could hold one terabyte (1,000GBs) of data, enough for 472 hours of film, or every episode of The Simpsons ever made.
The Mods technique is laser-based like existing DVD and CD technology. A disc is made up of tiny grooves filled with pits that reflect the laser as a series of ones and zeroes.
Reflected light
Current discs carry one bit of data per pit. But the researchers say that by using angled ridges in the pits, they can alter the way light behaves.
The end result is a way of encoding and detecting up to 10 times more information from one pit.
"We came up with the idea for this disc some years ago," said Dr Torok, "but did not have the means to prove whether it worked.
"To do that we developed a precise method for calculating the properties of reflected light, partly due to the contribution of Peter Munro, a PhD student working with me on this project.
"We are using a mixture of numerical and analytical techniques that allow us to treat the scattering of light from the disc surface rigorously rather than just having to approximate it.
"The future for the mobile device market is likely to require small diameter discs storing much information. This is where a Mods disc could really fill a niche," he said.
It could be some time before the technology makes it way into the living room. The Imperial College team believe it could take five years to perfect their technique, with a commercial version available by 2010, depending on funding.
It says the future disc could hold 472 hours of film ,enough for all the Simpsons episodes.
Are there really 950 episodes
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Adam Wilbert
Jedi Master Film Handler
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Posts: 590
From: Bellingham, WA, USA
Registered: Mar 2002
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posted 09-28-2004 10:57 PM
I think the idea of smaller media is interesting. I've found the small 3.5 (i think) inch cds to be pretty convienient, but they only hold a bit over 100 mb. Do they even make 3.5" DVD+/-ROM media yet?
Another thought: How much better can the Simpsons really look? Its not like they're going back to the original animation cells for the dvd issue, and I doubt that they even exist still. If dvds came in a HD resolution, then that would hold everyone over for quite some time. It boggles my mind that dvds are a semingly odd resolution, better than standard TV, but less than HD. WHY? If someone could shed light on why the res of a dvd is what it is (720x480, broadcast tv is 460x360, hd is 1920x1080), i'd appreciate it.
-adam
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David Buckley
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 525
From: Oxford, N. Canterbury, New Zealand
Registered: Aug 2004
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posted 09-30-2004 12:02 AM
Although a DVD with 200 movies on it may not be a great proposition, a VCR size box that holds 200, 400, 1000 movies using similar technology would be cool.
Warning - IT story
I did some consultancy on a government job a couple of years ago that involved scanning paperwork, and this ran to about a terabyte of images a year. But the knocker was that we needed to store it all for over a century. The big HP optical jukebox of the day stored about 1.2TB, so that would do for the first year, and something similar for the next couple of years.
The kicker was when the improvement in storage density was factored in, the amount of physical stoage space required never grew beyond about 400 square feet.
Unlike my first job in IT, where I briefly worked with the then fourth largest database in Europe, which occupied about 5000 square feet of data centre and broke a lot. And would fit on the hard disk of just about any PC you can buy today...
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Ron Yost
Master Film Handler
Posts: 344
From: Paso Robles, CA
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted 09-30-2004 03:22 PM
Just last night I went to Hollywood Video to rent a movie.
The girl tried to remove the lock on the case using the standard method .. which didn't work. She mumbled something under her breath, obviously becoming more exasperated by the second.
Then she proceeded to violently smash the lock-edge of the case on the edge of the counter until it was destroyed and the 'lock' fell out. (Proving, once again, that Mr. Redifer's 'solution' is THE answer in all difficult situations.)
Stunned, I said, "Jeez, you sure you didn't screw up the disc?" (I was gonna' add 'hun', but quickly realized this probably wasn't the best time for shallow, patronizing comments.)
She remarked, "NO!" (She didn't add "..You f'in IDIOT!", but I could tell she was thinking it.) "I'll put a new case on it when you bring it back. These stupid new cases don't work so good." "Ummm .. Ok.", I said, "So I'm not gonna' get charged for a new case, right?" She just glared and practically threw the thing at me after I'd passed thru the theft detector.
I walked out into the cold, lonely night .. knowing there are some people ya' just don't mess with.
Ron Yost
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