Panasonic develops 100GB Blu-ray discs to "last 100 years"

Go on Panasonic!!! Can't wait for the 100GB Bluy-ray disks to come out. Seems that HD have got a long way to go...

is there really a reason for a 100gb disc???

I could see these being used once 2540P is used in HDTV's

I will love to see it when it becomes cheap and lives up to its claim.

should be interesting to see what happens when they're tested outside of the lab.

pretty amazing but what is the cost.

For people needing to store 100gbs of data this might appeal (if it ever appears at a price the mass-market will accept).

But besides those professionals archiving vast amounts of raw data I doubt there is a need.

You might be interested in the latest advances being made with the VC-1 codec.
It even looks as if the (now ready) triple layer 45gb HD-DVD disc isn't going to be actually needed for high def movies and it looks as if it renders 50gb Blu-ray fairly pointless for movies (unless they insist on sticking with the comparatively clunky Mpeg2) -

Amir Microsoft/HD DVD insider over at avsforums.com

Well, I am pleased to let you in on where the future holds for titles in VC-1. We have now made another breakthrough in quality improvements as evidenced by two recent encodes which clocked at less than 10 mbit/sec, with one less than 9 mbit/sec!

Yes, you read this right.
We are now able to go below the 10 mbit/sec barrier. And this is not some random, special case, easy to encode content. One of the titles above is a major motion picture you would recognize in an instant with a ton of action.

What is more, the encoder is so efficient and good in its automatic analysis/encode mode that the need for hand tuning is sharply reduced.
One of the above titles didn’t need any manual optimizations despite the remarkably low data rate!

Given this breakthrough, we are going to see more titles appear at average rate of less than 10 mbit/sec, bringing the general range lower by 20% to 30%.
So no longer will I use the 12-15 mbit/sec for rule of thumb .

What does this mean in reality?
It means we only need 4.5 gigabytes per hour for video at 10 mbit/sec.
So a red laser disc (sans audio/extras) can hold 2 hours of superb quality video, HD DVD-15 can support 3.3 hours and HD DVD-30, a whopping 6.7 hours!
We can even do more in 9 mbit/sec.

What is more, with this improvement, we also save in peak rate requirement since the same efficiency kicks in there.

Of course, this is not to say all movies and all content will go this low.
But that there is a significant saving here across all.
Note that the rates in some cases are less than half of what was used in some HD DVD launch titles! We have come far in less than 12 months….

Net, net, we are getting pretty close to 3:1 advantage over MPEG-2! I let you ponder the impact of this on the format war.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=718689

This is great news. Especially for me. I'm in the music business. And when you need to store full cd images that take up 750mb and 100s of full length tracks in wav format. This majorly helps with back ups. TO back up my current business drive using 4.5gb dvds, would take 22 hours at 15 min a disc.

It's a "100 year" disc, but the technology that burns it might only be good for 5 to 10 years before it's replaced with something better and non-compatable.

Hmmmmm..... I'll be dead in 100 years, and so will you, and our children's children will say "Blu-Ray who/wha???" and Blu-ray will be more of an historical footnote in the back of technical journals, (like Sony U-Matic reel-to-reel video recordings or something), than a still-viable format, and the technology will have been superceded and replaced 3 or 4 dozen times with alternate noo-&-improoved Monster Formats "guaranteed" to last 4,296 years in accelerated ageing tests, and so on and so forth and bla-bla-bla, etc. etc. etc...... I'm far more interested in what they can come up with today, or next month, or next year, if only they will stop trying to 're-invent' Blu-ray, (how many more mystically-advanced Blu-ray permutations are they going to invent before they mass-release what they already have?), get off their duffs, and put something affordable and functional out there in the marketplace sometime tomorrow before lunchtime, or at least between now and when I grow too old, deaf and blind to watch movies anymore. Honestly people, these new 'miraculous' pie-in-the-sky announcements, (doesn't matter whether they're true or not), don't amount to a hill 'o termite poop in the overall scheme of things. Like the Lady on that old TV commercial used to say, "Where's The BEEF??" The End.

Can you imagine burning 100 GB's of data at a 2x write speed. OMG THE HUMANITY. LOL hope you don't need your computer for the next week.

You are so right FlakMNKY, I burn my discs at 4x and it take 13/14 minutes. Multiply that by 23 and it will hopefully be done by the time you get back from 8 hours of work. These wont be good for the average person.

Somehow I duodt it the and I bet the media mafiaa will prevent this from being normal.....

BD writable technology is completely different from BD ROM technology. There is no doubt that there will NEVER be a 3+ layer pressed BD disk. The BDA is barely able to make BD50 disks in any kind of quantity with anything approaching decent yields. And this is going to be used for data archiving? What a laugh. You can buy a 400 gig HD for $90 now, which is probably what something like this would cost seeing as how the 25 gig BD-R are $30. And by the time something like this actually makes its way out of the lab, holographic disk technology should be available. Talk about a superfluous technology. lol

Yes it would be way better to get a few 100gb HDD's for half the price, rather than bothering with this new, very buggy, tech. By the time these are needed HVD will be out and working properly and will render both BD and HD-DVD useless. As to how long it takes to burn one the read/write seads are way faster than DVD so it wont take anywhere near an hour to burn.

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How fast can you read/write data on a Blu-ray disc? According to the Blu-ray Disc specification, 1x speed is defined as 36Mbps. However, as BD-ROM movies will require a 54Mbps data transfer rate the minimum speed we're expecting to see is 2x (72Mbps). Blu-ray also has the potential for much higher speeds, as a result of the larger numerical aperture (NA) adopted by Blu-ray Disc. The large NA value effectively means that Blu-ray will require less recording power and lower disc rotation speed than DVD and HD-DVD to achieve the same data transfer rate. While the media itself limited the recording speed in the past, the only limiting factor for Blu-ray is the capacity of the hardware. If we assume a maximum disc rotation speed of 10,000 RPM, then 12x at the outer diameter should be possible (about 400Mbps). This is why the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) already has plans to raise the speed to 8x (288Mbps) or more in the future.

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Blu-ray.com/faq/" class="korostus" target="_blank">http://www.Blu-ray.com/faq/ 16x for DVD is about 22mbps so yea...

they have to get it stable and then lower the price, space vrs space a DISC is iely to take up LESS room than a HD after a few hundred TB Storage room will become a issue.

At 2x, you are looking at roughly 3 hours to burn one of those. When Burning DVD at 8x, it will take roughly 2 hours and 50 minutes... The only difference is the number of discs, so this is better. However, considering that 1 layer are about $30 and 2 layer are about $50, you can expect that this will be $90 - $100 per disc. I would rather go with HVD at $100 for 300GB and the write speed is much faster. Or holographic cards at $1 per 30GB card (down side is that the writer is about $7000). However, unless if the price for this disc goes under $5.32 per disc, it is not worth it over DVDs since that is what 100GB will cost to back up on DVDR... DVDR is about 18.8gbs per $1 or $0.0532 per gb. This is a nice achievement, but they must also find a way to produce it with the consumer in mind.

JaguarGod any format that first comes out will be 3-10X the price of current media,the trick is to balance thigns where the price comes down fast.

@wabashman and hughjars: Yeah, and why in the world would anyone need more than 50KB of RAM!?!? Come on people, I thought we were past this discussion...

what!! burning Blu-ray in 2x is 72Mbps and DVD in 16x is just 22Mbps... i "barely" can burn DVD @ 16x, my HDD speed is not fast enough. i can see the drive buffer go down to 15% when i burn DVD @ 16x so.. burning Blu-ray disc more than 2x speed, in the current HDD technoogy is hard to do... ATA-100 7200RPM HDD max speed only 25Mbps (close to 16x DVD.. 22Mbps)

I would think this is not only great for future data storage, but it might be great for HD video. "Can you imagine burning 100 GB's of data at a 2x write speed. OMG THE HUMANITY. LOL hope you don't need your computer for the next week." That's a good point that I didn't even think about! I wonder how they would overcome the time that it would take a user to burn an entire disk? The first thing that came to my mind after you mentioned it was perhaps a drive that might have multiple read/write lasers to help cut down on the access time. Increaing spin of the disk may not be an option. The multiple heads could be either tightly grouped together in a close cluster, or spanning in a straight across the disk. Both arrangements could be allowed movement back and forth to allow another laser to take over the duties if one ever fails, although it would slow performance to some degree.

"i "barely" can burn DVD @ 16x, my HDD speed is not fast enough. i can see the drive buffer go down to 15% when i burn DVD @ 16x so.. burning Blu-ray disc more than 2x speed, in the current HDD technoogy is hard to do... ATA-100 7200RPM HDD max speed only 25Mbps (close to 16x DVD.. 22Mbps)" Building off what I mentioned above, I wonder if higher capcity hard drives were made with dual actuator arms at each side of the platter stack. I would think it would be a noticable improvement in access speed. I guess it would be like having two drives built into one except there would only be one platter stack.

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cart0181
Junior Member
21. October 2006 @ 01:35 Link to this message Report an offensive post
@wabashman and hughjars:
Yeah, and why in the world would anyone need more than 50KB of RAM!?!? Come on people, I thought we were past this discussion...

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- It's not a Luddite issue at all, it's about a practical cost-effective application in the mass-market.

As has been already pointed out unless you've some amazing genuine archiving 'need' there really isn't a 'need' for this in the mass-market that can't be met more cost-effectively by other means.

hughjars the way you say that it feels liek whats the point of new technology its to costly and will never be cost effective. New technology in itself is always going to cost more than older,the question then becomes can it make money to survive until its a every day item. BR is fickle and costly right now even the consumer players are iffy perhaps this tech is just to new and unstable to be used correctly in the next 4 years but tis here and will not go away I look at the 100 GB a disc and like it but past the hype its still a fickle storage solution in order for most people to want to use it it needs to be stable and cheap ,it wont be cheap for awhile now since its still fresh from the labs ,on the other hand we have HD DVD stable fast and 10-30% cheaper than BR all they have to do to win is sell 45GB discs and burners 30-60% cheaper and they win simply because price comes first in these battles with quality and capacity being always 2nd. still is a long messy war unless one side bows out now,theres not going to much room for a consumer "archiving" niche with HD or BR because HDs will be slightly cheaper.

I think the thing I'm getting at is that we were originally told that the huge capacity potential Blu-ray offered was 'needed' because of the size of high def movies. That simply isn't so anymore. Once that 'need' drops out of the equation what on earth could anyone honestly claim they 'need' 100gb - 200gb discs for? ......and more to the point who honestly believes the mass-market is going to be interested in 100gb - 200gb discs, bearing in mind the undoubted huge premium they would try to sell them for, for if the use isn't for backing up high def movies? Particularly when HDD are likely to so much cheaper per gb anyway?

hughjars You are right 20-50GB is all we need with the correct MP4 codecs and hardware we can have great looking high quality high def movies. With that said its up to BR and HD to fight over hollywood in the end this is going to be a long drawn out fight with a dual burner at the end so neither format dies completely things are going well for HD DVD. WHat are your thoughts on the PS3 if HD dvd wins in 2-4 years? will sony break down and add on a HD DVD player or make a overhauled system with a dual reader in it? Or will sony have its finger up its nose ignoring reality?

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With that said its up to BR and HD to fight over hollywood

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- Certainly from this end it looks like 'neutral' is a growing tendancy.

There are too many HD-DVD players out there now for anyone to be deliberately cutting themselves off from that market (and the XBox add-on just boosts that some more).

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in the end this is going to be a long drawn out fight with a dual burner at the end so neither format dies completely things are going well for HD DVD.

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- I agree. Did you see the quote from DVD world?

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from dvdfile.com

'Mixed Messages Concerning the Potential for a Hybrid Player

It was reported that at a recent CEA industry forum, proponents form both the HD DVD camp and the Blu-ray Disc camp sparred verbally.
Mark Knox represented the HD DVD Promotion Group.
Pioneer senior vice president of product development and Blu-ray Disc Association spokesman Andy Parsons represented the other camp.
Like good politicians tend to do, Knox and Parsons stuck to their predefined messages.

But there was one notable exception.

Neither voiced a problem with the concept of a universal player that would accommodate both HD disc formats.

They stated that no legal impediments exist in either format’s licensing agreements to preclude the development and marketing of such a player.

This would seem to contradict previous reports that Sony’s licensing agreement specifically forbids Blu-ray Disc technology from being integrated into a hybrid player'.

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- Maybe heads are clearing and the damage each side is inflicting on the other is becoming clear.......dual format players soon?

Is this all about to go the way of the DVD -R & DVD +R 'war' ?

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WHat are your thoughts on the PS3 if HD dvd wins in 2-4 years?
will sony break down and add on a HD DVD player or make a overhauled system with a dual reader in it?

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- That is a distinct possibility but I tend to think a dual format scenario allows for Sony to save face and keep the PS3 Blu-ray only.

You can see that that is their tendancy with the switch to VC-1 and my bet is they may be left in the ironic position of having formed a consortium for Blu-ray to reduce risk etc and ending up being out-voted by the other members who will want to move to a dual format player.
Sony could well be left complaining on their lonesome as the others churn out dual format players & cash in.

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AE27 (Member) 20. October 2006 @ 10:22
I could see these being used once 2540P is used in HDTV's

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- You should learn about film grain sizes and resolution.
For 35mm film we are, at 1080p, in most instances, at the point of 'transperency' with the master.

You can't just keep upping resolution and expecting better results cos after a certain point (which we are very close to now) you just end up with the grains breaking up and 'noise'.

I've nicked this from elsewhere, I hope it helps -

It's all to do with scanning the movies and grain sizes.

2k Telecine is common (the other 'standard is 4k, usually for FX too) apparantly grains tend to break up much above 2k.
see this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine

2k is used for 1080p = transparent as many movies are processed at 2k.

http://www.users.qwest.net/~rnclark/scandetail.htm
This is an interesting page that compares the scan quality of various resolutions. It's actually for comparing digital cameras to film frame detail, but it's very interesting, and seems to suggest 4000dpi is commonly used, while 8000dpi is approaching the diffraction limit (ie where no more detail is possible to capture - only noise). That said, he states he is using Velvia film, which is a film with one of the lowest amounts of grain possible, so the figures he gives are definately upper limits.
In other words, 2000dpi would probably be more than sufficient for normal film and scanning at lower resolutions, such as 720p or 1080p.

Even if another even larger HD format arrives, there wouldn't really be any point transferring 35mm movies to anything larger than 1080p.

They would have to start filming on 70mm (imax) to go any higher.
Even at 1080p you'll see lots of grain and resolution breaking up with 35mm.

Well, I guess some people don't see the discussion (on storage size)as overwith. I guarantee you will all eat your words and end up looking as stupid as the guy who said "who needs more than 50KB of RAM." It's only a matter of time... Do you really think compression technology is going to out-pace the need for additional storage space? I'm on Zippy's side on this one. (for once)

cart0181

BR has potential but is limping along right now if they dont do something ASAP and bring their prices to match HD they will simply lose the whole point of this war is to get hollywood anyhtign after that is sloppy seconds I ca easily see BR being a over priced archiving solution like the old jazz and zip drives.

I would like BR to win and in wining they must lower their prices.but HD DVD is on the path to wining and the 100GB discs even if they were cheap that would only be adfordly by the common consumer in 4 years ;_;

I see BR as the best choice for all as long as it can fix itself and be cheap other wise it will just fail us...


bah I am sleep typeing I cant tell is I am makeing any since *L*

hughjars
1.I dotn think hollywood ever "forced" media changes they waited and then pounced and culg to the winning format,they will waffle in the brezze until one format because unprofitable to sell on.


2.Pretty much they would rather join in pillaging the consumers then fight to the death THAN be forced into a price war where the winner could not rape people thru their wallets plus roums abound that dual players/buners can be built rather easily once the bugs are dealt with.so they do what all corporations do fight in front of the camera and make out behind the scenes 0-o
it reminds me of the Dues ex 2 thing where both coffee cafe chains are owned by the same corporation that was rather funny and scary do well really know who owns who? 0-o


3.Ah sony I think they ahve elarned from beta max and the PSP that going it alone is to costly better to join others and get money regardless of what is going on.
(side note the PSP would be the best thing since sliced bread if sony would have opened up made a media player program for the PSP let people convert films with the use of a tool and stuff they could always use frimware updates to squash emus and copy playback ga they have no forethought for the PSP and the stagnation of it shows that..)



4.I an only really tell a diffrance in codecs and 1080p on the more costly display unit I have seen at best buy and acouple more pricey chains its like normal HD in 580 is 10-20% in diffreance,720 is 20-30% and 1080p is 30-40% with the high brands looking 10-30% better than that(40-70%) I am like....holy shit the diffrances in quality are so all over the place just because it says HD means squat if you have 1-3 grand to buy a HD setup you need to do alot of reasearch on whats what its almost like buying computer parts 0_o

what I am saying is things are a mess,I guess we are stil in a transitional phaze from old "analog" TV to new "digital" it seems this phaze will be around another 2 or 3 years until all the new tech gets distrusted enough.and even 5-10 to become "normal".

if it was cost effective i would prefer to store stuff on dvds, especially 100gb ones, than on a tape backup or a removable platter hard drive. The fact is, once the data is on the cd and the burn was verified, though it may take awhile, you now have a guaranteed backup of that file that will last longer than you (supposedly). If you take care of the disk, depending on how important the data is, you will always have that as long as you want it. Large disk images (iso's) can take up a lot of space and its good to archive them to dvd.

I think someone has the wrong end of the stick here (or is trying to just divert the issue with ridiculous and irrelevant comments about 50kb of RAM).

I didn't even say additional disc capacity was of no interest or use anyway.

I did say that, knowing what we now know, the 15 - 30gb (& possibly their 45gb as it uses existing infrastructure and is now working and ready to use on existing drives) capacity of HD-DVD
and
the 25gb - 50gb Blu-ray discs' capacity look like being perfectly sufficient for all possible credible market needs right now - especially when cost is taken into account
(and, lets be honest, looking at how much DVD9 costs, it's hard to see the mass-market rushing to buy even those high def discs in huge volumes either).

The point is that the 100gb Blu-ray disc mentioned (and the other 200gb disc sometimes mentioned) has no real practical application (now even 50gb is unnecessary for high def movies) and certainly not at the price they are liable to go for.....

.....with I suppose the exception, possibly, for those professionally archiving (and I suspect they would use other means than a mass-market commercial disc).

As for space?
Well, I suppose cooling space makes a slight difference but ever larger HDD's offer a bigger, practical, cheap(er) and obvious alternative right now.

If anyone wants to claim an array of 750gb HDD's is the same as 50kb of RAM then go ahead, but IMO it's a pretty silly point to try and make and it does completely ignore what is actually being said.

Personally, I don't think the large size is needed for the new movie formats. The reason is that I think they look like crap...

OK, they are pretty sharp and the colors are nice, but the compression problems drive me insane. I hate HD. It is done completely wrong. Regardless of how efficient VC-1 and AVC are, they are talking about compressing movies to 9mbps!!!! That is roughly a 165:1 compression!!

On HD from Cable and Satellite I see all the crap from digital compression and it annoys me. Details seem to disappear when something moves. There was something where someone was wearing a black pin striped suit. When he moved, the stripes vanished. Then the other guy was wearing a dark green suit. When he moved, the collar, pockets, and all other details vanished and it looked like he was wearing a solid colored sweater. Heck, my 14 year old TVs look better on analog than all HD I have seen. This is 27" FS vs. 60" WS though. However regardless the actual look even if it were equal size, the digital compression problems are not in the analog.

I believe that even with VC-1 and AVC, they should have capped bitrate at 60mbps. Then all this extra storage would be more welcomed. There is no movie right now that would go anywhere near a full BD25 when compressed to 9mbps, heck, you would have a hard time filling a DVD9 at that bitrate!!!

The problem is that they went for technology with slow read speads so they are forced to cap at under 1x speed. A 25GB BD disc is a good size for High quality DVD (compressed to 25mbps) with extras.

A 100GB BD is pointless since 1x is 36mbps. What are they going to do, load 100 different language tracks on a disc?? 2 hour long menus?? Movies filmed at 3 completely different angles??

HD had a nice potential, but the technology needed is not available. Sure the stuff *looks* sharp, but it is not a better picture. These discs are only good for storing data. They will never be used for movies unless they decide to store an entire season of a show on a disc, but they won't since this means they will not make as much profit from charging $40 per 3 episodes.

For everyone that thinks I am insane for saying that HD looks like crap, compare it to a high bitrate DVD (Superbit). Also keep in mind that Superbit represents about 70% of capped DVD quality. Now, is there so much of a difference to actually consider this a "New Technology"??? It is better than DVD, but not by much, and sometimes a little worse.

With new movies it is hard to see because new DVDs are compressed like crazy and they (Sony) don't make Superbit anymore. I think it is on purpose to make the difference bigger between HD and DVD...

If instead of making something like BD with large potential storage, they should have made something with faster read speed. If 1x would have been 72mbps on BD or HD DVD, then you would have seen some really good HD at about 50mbps bitrate. If you think VC-1 looks good at 12 - 18 mbps, can you imagine at 50mbps??? It would look almost like D5 probably. The only problem with this (for the companies) is that the quality would be so good, there would be no need for further upgrading for many years.

Sorry, it's late and I;m tired, so I sort of ranted a bit...

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If instead of making something like BD with large potential storage, they should have made something with faster read speed. If 1x would have been 72mbps on BD or HD DVD, then you would have seen some really good HD at about 50mbps bitrate. If you think VC-1 looks good at 12 - 18 mbps, can you imagine at 50mbps??? It would look almost like D5 probably. The only problem with this (for the companies) is that the quality would be so good, there would be no need for further upgrading for many years.

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1x for BD is defined as 36mpbs, as BD movies need a transfer speed of 54mpbs then 2x (72mbps) will be minimum speed of any BD drive. Im pretty sure thats all thats needed for read speeds.

I still dont see why all this space is needed, 100gb is overkill for movies and i dont see consumers buying them until they cost alot less if they ever even get commercially released. Great to know its possible but not interested, rather go buy a HDD or 2.

I don't think JaguarGod will be satisfied until he has a film projector or at least a 4K projector with 4096 x 2160 pixel resolution:

http://news.sel.sony.com/en/press_room/b...lease/8816.html

Andrew691
the space is good for games and TV series they can litrealry put more eps onto a disc at a cheaper price there are good thens about BR,this of it like this is the price of 100GB is 20 a disc and Anime or other 24X30min EP shows are complete on 1 BR disc at the price of 50-60$ its almost worth it right then and there,most 25 ep anime s almost 15-25 a DVD at 4 eps per DVD or a box set for 80-140.

Of coarse its going to be awhile before they start putting more onto media and making you pay less for it.

@eatsushi,

Thanks for the link!!! I think you are right!!!

@Andrew691,

You are correct about the transfer speeds, but even if it is transfering at 54mbps, the actual video data is capped at 25mbps. They say it can handle 40mbps video, but if the cap is 25mbps, it will never happen...

This is possibly used for some type of buffer. I don't know how the players are built, but it is possible. Or there is a chance that it is using the extra read speed for audio.

"Although artificial ageing acceleration tests showed that the disc is readable even after 100 years, CDs were tipped to last for ages when they were first introduced, however they turned out to have invariably short (5-10 year) lifespans."

Lol I have CD's that are over 24 years old and they play just as good as the day I bought them when I was 16 in 1985.

If looked after (and not given to 2 year old to play with) they'll last 100 years np.

I download my media, but still prefer portable media like cd's and dvd's atm, going to wait a year or so before trying blueray, I still don't think it's worth paying 3-4 times for a movie that's only twice as better quality and some blueray movies aren't even that after seeing them, probably down to the crappy source material that was used. (after all it can only be as good as the origional).

I think it's great that Panasonic are thinking 'long-term' mass storage, they'll always be a need for simple portable storage without have to rely on some HDD somewhere.