Storage Media of the Future

[Cee-Kay]

DVDs could hold '100 times more'

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 one of the most successful consumer products in history. Most DVDs have two layers and can hold up to 8.5GB. Work is already well advanced on the next generation. One technology, HD-DVD (High Definition DVD), can hold up to 30GB, while a rival format called Blu-ray offers 50GB 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...

Read the whole story here

[prathapml]

But it won't be called DVD. 'Coz the standard for DVD is defined already....

Anyways, what happenened to the Blu-ray Disc and the FMD (Fluorescent Multi-layer Disc) which were so hyped up in their time, that they'd be the next big thing...

Nah... these break-throughs die natural deaths, unless they get commercial backing.

[sven]

i dont even have more then 80 gigs on my hd, so even if it came out, and they had burners.... theres no real point to make burners