- Sunday, 8 November 2009
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Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction - Pierre Pachet
GE's holographic disc challenges cloud streaming
WE'VE ALL HEARD of browser wars and platform wars, but it seems a new battle may be looming large on the horizon, and that battle will be waged on the media storage front, with the amorphous but growing cloud pitted against the disc.
Yestertday, General Electric said its R&D department had made a "major breakthrough in the development of next generation optical storage technology". The firm announced its boffins down in the labs had been toying with a new holographic optical storage disc, which could allegedly support up to 500GB of data, roughly equivalent to 100 DVDs - Blu-ray discs hold between 25GB and 50GB.
The disc - purportedly the same physical size as a regular DVD - is micro-holographic, meaning it can store data in three dimensions and allows for both read and write.
GE reckons that by the time it gets its discs out of the labs and onto shelves, they'll appeal not only to the archive industry, but also to the general public who could also put the potential terabyte of data to good use.
The firm says it will also be able to build players for the discs with backwards compatibility so that they can support existing DVD and Blu-ray tech.
Brian Lawrence, who leads GE's Holographic Storage programme said GE's research meant "The day when you can store your entire high definition movie collection on one disc and support high resolution formats like 3D television is closer than you think.''
But Jules Urbach, founder and CEO of Otoy and Lightstage, sees the future of multimedia storage very differently indeed from GE.
Urbach's project, the Fusion Render Cloud (FRC), embraced and adopted by chip giant AMD, is all about live streaming of media directly to a user's device, with the contents stored in the cloud.
"FRC supports 8kx8k streaming at up to 120 fps on a single GPU," Urbach told the INQ adding that FRC and OTOY "can encode uploaded streams to the cloud with the same codec as the downstream content".
"Live streaming is the real next frontier, not bigger discs," went on Urbach, adding that his technology gave users the best of both worlds as it allowed them to both stream HD content in real time and store it locally for offline viewing anytime.
Urbach noted AMD and Otoy were working on adding virtual worlds and even linear content to FRC, ensuring it carried on evolving, and spanning Terabytes of data.
"So," concluded Urbach, "going back to storing everything on a fixed disc the consumer has to physically possess seems like a step backwards to me." µ
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So this announcement is a yearly event?
And the media will cost a small fortune - so that at the end nobody buys it.
Until its price matches 3:1 ratio (per GB) against the hard disk storage media - there is no much benefit from such technology.
The first Holographic disk & it's drive went on sale over two years ago. It is only 300GB per disk in the initial release, but the roadmap released at that time shows 800GB scheduled for about now and 1.6TB in another couple of years.
It doesn't play Blu-Ray or DVD, but there are already drives that do that. Cost is the problem with initial pricing at $180 for HoloDisc-R media and drives at $18,000. I have seen no further pricing info, so I'm guessing they are still in the realm of "If you have to ask, you can't afford it"
All that is needed now is for the prices to drop so HoloDisc can take over the home storage market.
Sounds like a great war to be in, and i really think the AMD guys could have a great product if they were not completley dependant on the web. In most of the UK we are lucky to get 2-4Mbps to with a minimum of 16Mbps for 120FPS this sounds like a dead duck, so the new disc media guys win!
If it holds true that flash memory capacity doubles every year at the same price point, the only advantage for this new medium is its bigger size.
By 2012 a SD sized flash card will retail for approx. €30 for 256GB incl. VAT. Price prediction for this holographic thing is $50 (US prices are usually without Sales Tax) for 500GB at launch.
"So," concluded Urbach, "going back to storing everything on a fixed disc the consumer has to physically possess seems like a step backwards to me." µ
well you would say that wouldnt you
cloud computing doesnt sit well with me at all ...just another form of control i dont care how good they get at it!!!
my paid for disc wins everytime!!
Remember That Rock VIDEO, Pushing Up Dasiies? It Was Rap Tune, With Daisy & child & Words "Pushing Up Daisy" repeated Over & Over. In Cloud Computing You wouldn't remember Unless You Used your PVR & Burned One.
It is important to be able to Refresh YOUR Memory. That Stuff We ALL Share, In Media Sense.
With Cloud, as Great As It Is, You Still Need to Burn Disc for Really Powerful Images, That Reminds One of Where Ones Been. So Both, $20 Grand for Burner & another 8$ Grand for Ultimate computer & Digital Line. Now Cut 100 videos yearly & mere $140 hour. Doc Tom Can Tell You Thats GOOD. drashek
Let's see...
CD/DVD/Bluray/Holographic Disk: Media is problematic. Relatively fragile, easily made non-usable, bulky as I can't put in pocket.
Cloud computing: Requires high-speed broadband everywhere. How long will that take and how much will it cost? Long time, think decade at least, and much more expensive than disk storage. And generally less dependable as the criticality increases, inverse relationship.
Seems to me best bet is continued progress in non-volatile solid state memory. A terabyte in my pocket, always available, rugged.
IMHO, GE chasing after holographic disk storage is good example of lack of adequate leadership at GE. Oh, and the fact their stock price has fallen off a cliff.
It'd take 20,000 Hours in Year to burn that much (100 discs) on Holographic. Also, since 100 DVD fit on Hologram disc, its more like $5 movie Total disc cost + equipment, which after 3 years is Mere $500/Disc additional or $1,000.00 per disc total,$ to Burn, Data to ?store.
Daisy Wheel is apperture with multiple eyes or opening. When disc spins, not all eyes maintain focus on daata stream, so with more than one eye on one data stream, if one slips out of focus, others still pick up stream stream correctly, being light, it can do that. STeWie drashek
Who said the MAFIAA will allow you to keep your live streamed movie to watch off line? They will only fulfill their most cherished dream, pay-per-view streamed content!
Secondly, most broadband connections out there are in the 2-4 Mbps, with lots of uncovered areas... Only people living close to big cities are to enjoy enough connection speed to watch streamed Full HD movies.
People can't afford a new car so dealers are shutting down left and right. Car companies cutting costs/models trying not to go bankrupt. People are getting poorer . But ohhhhhhhh these future tech dreamers are just sure everyone has wads of cash just laying around waiting to throw at the clouds. GET REAL , Since alot of people can't pay their mortgages and other costs keep going up just to survive.......how much more new xtra nonessential trash are you going to try to sell to broke people ?
Give me a disc any day, it's your only protection against having the content that you've paid for robbed off you or held to ransom by DRM-based extortionists. I do not "subscribe" to a bloody piece of music or a video, I *BUY* a copy and bollocks to the content producers and their rent-seeking behaviour; I will NOT pay for the same damn thing over and over again.
Disks are increasingly becoming more and more pointless as USB flash drives and SD Cards keep getting bigger in terms of capacity and cheaper.
Give me my music albums and movies on a USB stick with some videos thrown in along with a booklet with some nice artwork and the words to the songs and/or info on the movie.