I want my VHS player back Carlos

[Kratos]

DVD players have been one of the most successful consumer electronics ever marketed. At one time the guy at Best Buy told me to forget about VHS the future was High 8, you know those stupid little video tapes that go into camcorders of the early 90's. Before buying either a blue-ray or HD-dvd player and which format will win you might want to consider the possiblility that neither will win. In other words one format will need to gain substantial market share before something better comes along...and something better will come along.

Multiplexed Optical Data Storage
rial College offers the following explanation:
Unlike existing optical disks, MODS disks have asymmetric pits, each containing a stepsunk within at one of 332 different angles, which encode the information. The Imperial researchers developed a method that can be

The new MODS – Multiplexed Optical Data Storage – discs could potentially store up to one terabyte of data each. Although not yet mastered, the team have ‘demonstrated what can be done’. To achieve the maximum storage capacity, the MODS discs will be double sided and dual layered, and instead of storing one bit per pit like conventional CDs and DVDs, MODS discs can store eight bits due to the asymmetrical nature of the pits. used to make a precise measurement of the pit orientation that reflects the light back. A different physical phenomenon is used to achieve the additional gain.
For storage administrators, and eventually home users, this may one day mean CD/DVD-sized discs that can store up to 1 terabyte of data (1,000 gigabytes) on a dual-layer, double sided disc. This translates to 472 hours of broadcast quality video. For TV buffs, this means that one disc could hold all 350 episodes of The Simpsons or each of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s 178 episodes with room to spare.
Should the team secure more funding for their development efforts, the first MODS discs may appear between 2010 and 2015, according to estimates from researchers at the University of Neuchbtel Institute of Micorotechology in


VDs store information in the form of simple, steep-sided pits each holding 1 bit of data. Although the storage capacity can be increased by writing the pits into different layers of the disk, it is still currently limited to around 4.7 Gb per layer. Now Peter Török and colleagues
the amount that a BluRay disk can hold." The technology, called Mult-iplexed Optical Data Storage, or MODS for short, differs somewhat from the current practice of etching miniscule pits to denote the zeroes and ones on the reflective layer on a disc. In a statement, Impe-
Switzerland and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Aristotle University of The ssaloniki in Greece.
They also estimate that costs should fall in line with those of current disc technologies, and that MODS drives will be backward compatible with

at Imperial College in the UK and co-workers at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland have realized that by giving the pits an angular sub-structure they could hold at least ten times more data. To do this, the physicists needed to find a way of reading this angle rapidly, so as not to compromise the optical drive’s data rate. The solution was a combination of polarized light, a quadrant detector and light scattering analysis. The team has built a prototype using a 405-nm laser and the scheme, dubbed Multiplexed Optical Data Storage (MODS), is now being patented.
Dr Török revealed, "According to our experimental results, we can optimistically estimate that we will be able to store about one Terabyte per disk in total using our new method. This translates to about 250GB per layer, 10 times


Optical disk test set-up built by Martin Salt from the Institute of Microtechnology, University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland) and Peter Török from Imperial College (UK). The one Terabyte disk would be double sided and dual layer, but even the team’s single sided version could hold the Lord of the Rings trilogy 13 times over, or all 238 episodes of Friends. (Credit: University of Neuchâtel/Imperial College)

CD’s and DVD’s.
Although based initially on straight edge features, it turns out that the system also works with other pit geometries. "They do not have to be steps as long as they have a suitable asymmetry," says Török. "The orientation is between 0 to 180°, but we can resolve 330 different orientations within the 0 to 180° angular range."
Funded as part of the EU’s SLAM (Super Laser Array Memory) programme, the three-year project, which also involved scientists at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, ended in May this year. Török believes that if his team can attract further funding, the first MODS disks, with a storage potential of around 250 Gb per layer, could be on the shelves between 2010 and 2015.
Despite having only a tenth of the storage capacity of MODS technology, it will be Sony’s BluRay that is the first to challenge DVDs’ do-mination of the audiovisual optical disk market. BluRay disks storing 25 Gb per layer, five times the capacity of current DVDs, are exp-ected to be released towards the end of 2005 for the home market.
Dr Peter Török will be attending a meeting later on this year to find out if the discs are viable for mass manufacture, and is confi-dent that their fabrication will be easy and cheap. Res-earch and funding permi-tting, Dr Török estimates that the discs will be avai-lable on the market within


Typical output from Imperial College’s disk analysis software. Its Multiplexed Optical Data Storage (MODS) disks have asymmetric pits, at one of 332 different angles, which encode the information. (Credit: Imperial College)

BluRay disc is likely to be similarly scratch sensitive. Hard drives are in fact far more delicate than discs, hence having to keep them contained. The advantage of MODS discs when it comes to data protection is that a large number of discs can be produced for low cost, so duplicate copies will be easy to produce.
Dr Török emphasised that whilst you could fit a large amount of data on one disc, for example a few series of The Simpsons, it may not necessarily reduce the cost of the MODS on the market. Whilst they are still cheap to produce, movies and music will still be subject to addit-ional charges. "You don't

five to ten years. Although he emphasised that "there have been a lot of misinterpretations and misunderstan-dings" surrounding the new discs, and this timescale is "largely affected by political and financial factors as well as technological factors", a fact missed out by a large majority of articles covering this technology.
The BluRay disc, although technically sound, has had its date of release pushed back due to these reasons. Before a new data disc comes into the market, a universal standard must be agreed by the companies which will produce it, which can take a great deal of time. The BluRay consortium was set up for this very purpose, to establish a universal standard for the BluRay media. The other factor is that the companies will want to make as much money as they can out of previous technologies before they render them obsolete and embrace new ones. This can be seen by the fact that only now is VHS being withdrawn from sale, and DVDs are being given greater emphasis. BluRay can only come out once the companies have made enough money from the sale of DVDs, or they are forced to market their product by the competition, and consequently MODS discs will most likely be able to come on to the market once the companies have milked all they can
from BluRay.Once it has been established whether it is technologically and financially possible to mass- produce MODS discs and share data, the team hope to further research whether a writing/rewriting facility can be made available. Dr Török mentioned that they do have the capacity to reach that status, but again it is heavily dependent on further funding.
30-year data storage pioneer Michael Thomas, owner of Colossal Storage, believes that the concept will fail because the design is prone to complex errors, and that it may just be better to continue to store large amounts of data on a hard drive, but Dr Török believes that this is only partially true. Any data system relying on fitting a large amount of data in a smaller space will always be prone to error for a number of reasons, even when comparing DVD and CD discs. The same thickness of scratch on a DVD takes out many more bits of data than on a CD, and this effect is even greater for MODS discs, especially as the wavelength of light involved is significantly smaller (around 405nm). This does not mean, however, that the whole technology can be dismissed and in actual fact the
buy the disc [in that case], you support the large number of people behind the production", so all episodes of a TV series on one MODS disc will cost no less than a box set of DVDs, but there will be the added convenience of hav-ing everything onone discand saving valuable space on the shelf He also stressed that the project is very much collaborative, with a number of people significantly involved, including his PhD student, Mr Peter Munro. The ot-her members of the team are Dr Mar-tin Salt, Professor Hans Peter Herzig and Mr Carsten Rockstuhl from the University of Neuchatel in Switz-erland and Emmanouil Kriezis from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece.
The team have applied for funding to EPSRC and are currently in the pro-cess of writing a European grant application to fund their research fur-ther. The latter one is a collabo-ration between the Imperial physics and electrical engineering (led by Dr Eric Yeatman) departments, the Technical University of Delft, the University of Neuchatel and Aristotle University. Dr Török has also set up a website to reveal the facts behind popular claims, as well as further details behind the new technology. This can be found at www.opticaldisc-systems.com/
articlesarchive

[Bryan2]

dvds already take forever to burn Can you imagine how long it will be to butrn one disc?

they need to make new burners for this technology to become effective. and at this rate I think flash memory harddrives are the most suitable for this amount of data... This technology is already in place it just needs time to be explorered further for costs to come down.