I really hope this technology pans out. In my optics class at school, my prof said that the only technology preventing us from building an optical computer right now is memory/data storage. Everything else has been done already. Optical computers would make the fastest computers today look like trash, and store tons of data (the article says an optical disk can store 63x the data on a DVD)

Ummm...So does this mean I should sell off my DVD collection while there is still a market for them? I've got a couple of hundred movies on DVD and i'd hate to wake up tomorrow and find out they were as useless as an 8 track cassette.

On the other hand i'd love to just tape them all to one disc so if i ever feel like watching one of them again i'd just have to grab the remote and skim the menu.

Ah the trouble of living in a fast breaking tech world.

Love and light,

Wupy

I have absolutely zero problem with his as long as it is not insanely expensive. Imagine turning your PC into a PS3, PS2, PlayStation and any other game system you want, as well as storing all of your fave tv shows and movies and still have tons o' space. I welcome it with open arms.

I am hardcore technical though, so that is why I say that...

L8tr

This sounds a lot like the "crystal" drive they had in the late 90's;

Basicly the whole library of congress would fit on a chip the size of your thumbnail - It was done my moving molicules, both X and Y axis.

It made the cover of a Tech magazine back about 96-97 or so - but disapeared - Never entered the market. Said they had to get their R+D money back from standard HDD's before they could let it come out.

Can't wait to have a real look at it.

I believe that this tech is even cheaper than current systems. It should be as inexpensive as Solid state tech.

article
With uncompressed storage capacities achieving 1.6 TeraBytes per disk and data rates as high as 120 MBPs, holographic technology is a true breakthrough in optical media.

thats pretty damn impressive.

ummmm....So does this basically put HD-DVD & Blu-Ray to bed?

I don't think the products that will be released by Maxell will be geared toward the DVD BluRay market. The unit on the website and the literature make this look like a replacement for the current market of magneto-optical drives used mostly by hospitals and for critical data storage. My bet is that the drive will cost a fortune, let alone the media. Notice that they say it will be cheap "per gigabyte" or some such wording. Just look online and see what a 9.1 GB optical drive will cost you today. These things won't be cheap for some time.

Like all new tech it'll take time to become the standard. From vinyl to cassette from cassette to CD from CD to DVD. You get the Picture. Like most companies we will see late next year or sooner a new setup for PC's but as usual as soon as they are out of the wrapper they are obsolete. I do wonder how chunky they will be be as DVDs are slimline will Holography make us go bigger again we will see.

Originally posted by Murcielago

article
With uncompressed storage capacities achieving 1.6 TeraBytes per disk and data rates as high as 120 MBPs, holographic technology is a true breakthrough in optical media.

thats pretty damn impressive.

ummmm....So does this basically put HD-DVD & Blu-Ray to bed?

Short answer(short term)..no, Long Term .. Maybe. It does put to bed Magnetic Harddrives though for Business applications. Each disk will cost 100 buck each I believe(I read that somewhere but I forget) so it's slightly cheaper then current 300 GB Magnetic Drives.

... I've spent the last week of spare time "cleaning" out my drives. Reminds me of when I was a kid and had to do my room except there is more junk on my drives then there was in my room at 10 years old.

You know, with this technology, one could almost put every film or movie or (a photo of every person you ever meet for example) personal document one was ever to aquire through out ones life.

This is the one thing that really scares me about the PC industry, and capitalist competition in general. The new BluRay disks were on their way in to the public market this Xmas. They are suppose to be like 30 gigs a disk, and this had me and many others with a data storage problem similar to mine very excited.. and now.. the tech is obsolete already.. it didn't even make it to the shelf this time. How is that type of competition good? It ends up being a total waste of production time to bring the units to the public market if they are just going to be surplanted with a completely different (and far supieror) type of technology within a year. I can understand that the R&D is still important because it will lead to other things, but I'm talking solely about the waste of production of a technology that will soon be ancient history. That can't be good for any civilisation, period... and its happening all the time.


-VMX



[edit on 30/11/2005 by Vis Mega]

Again let me reiterate this DOES NOT replace next gen DVDs, it's a replacement for 3 1/4" Magnetic Storage drives, the price per GB is nearly Identical and when you compare it with next gen DVDs those are still much much cheaper per GB and thus is not a threat to BluRay. The BIG threat to DVDs(of whatever standard) is Download and Play stores like iTunes but for Movies and Television.

This is such cool news, (I'm even gonna use it as a curent event for my Contemporary Social Issues class), I'd been wondering when this technology would come about.

My question is this, how long will it be before it becomes affordable enough for the average person?

In the areas they target these products be it business first some bright spark will adapt it to the home user market. Look at dvd players expensive at first now dirt cheap!!!

So go for within three years.

Originally posted by mrwupy
Ummm...So does this mean I should sell off my DVD collection while there is still a market for them? I've got a couple of hundred movies on DVD and i'd hate to wake up tomorrow and find out they were as useless as an 8 track cassette.

Actually, that's what I thought about too... but then I opened up my drive and took a nice look at the thousands of mp3's I have all in one local spot... and thought about how nice it is that all my cd's are safe in a case and not being scratched up... only time I ever use them is when I reload my pute... and even now all I do is burn all most recents to a backup DVD so if I ever crash I just load some DVD's instead of re-burning every single CD.... it's so nice!

With an optical puter I could finally have just one pute running everything instead of a couple... running music, movies, or anything else while playing MMORPG's doesn't work too well on one puter...

Look at it like this: Some day a person won't have to buy a cable box, stereo, TV, home security system, DVD, anything... just buy a central home computer and buy the simple peripherals for it. Get a new DVD? Burn the ENTIRE DVD onto your drive... no diminished quality, all the same features... plus you get all the internet extras, and you can have all your hundreds of DVD's on one drive! Store those DVD's where they won't get scratched up and then you really can blame your friend for jacking it up when he borrowed it

oh yeah... forgot to mention, I love to collect music videos... they take up alot of space as well, and it's pretty kewl when you're having a party and throw on the Safety Dance video... I need bigger storage just for those alone. I hope they get this out sooner.

BTW, wonder if the hologram storage would be good enough when they finally get a fully consumer operational DNA computer Probably be out of date by then, lol

Well i aint gettin rid of my stack of karate movie DVDs!! how would i live without classics like angry fist and canton iron kung fu?!?! no sir im keepin a dvd player and tv to preserve those babys...

This sounds very interesting. I can't wait until it hits the market, and see how it does. I hope it pans out, unlike other new tech that was supposed to "revolutionalize" computers.

Originally posted by mrwupy
Ummm...So does this mean I should sell off my DVD collection while there is still a market for them? I've got a couple of hundred movies on DVD and i'd hate to wake up tomorrow and find out they were as useless as an 8 track cassette.

On the other hand i'd love to just tape them all to one disc so if i ever feel like watching one of them again i'd just have to grab the remote and skim the menu.

Ah the trouble of living in a fast breaking tech world.

Love and light,

Wupy

No need to sell them lol wait till the tech is out buy it burn the lot of your dvd to a single holgrapic disk and then sell lol...although i do not condon illegal copying (got myself out of that:@@

The new HD and Blue ray will be superseeded if this becomes cheap and viaable as it thought that a single disk will be able to hold terrabites of data which put anything to shame.

I would imagine that security protection on these new types of disk will be unbreakable nearly.