Toshiba has decided to invested in Optware, which is only one of the companies that Optware is talking to as it tried to gain more US venture capital.
Optware is currently working to finish development of its HVD (Holographic Versatile Disc) technology that would enable DVD sized discs or blocks to store upwards of 1TB (1000GB) of data. The HVD technology stores data inside a disc as holographic patterns.
HVD player/recorder machines and first-generation writeable discs that will be able to store 200GB will go on sale sometime next June for the enterprise storage market, and HVD players accompanied by 100 gigabyte read-only HVD discs should be available for the consumer market sometime in 2007.
This may be the relplacement to the HD-DVD standard that has been taking a bit of a beating in the standards war lately and a great competitor for the Blu-Ray DVD technology that many companies have signed on to use.
I’m all for less disc-based technologies. But as far as disc memory goes, I think BLU-Ray is the right step to take, because as the layers of data keep increasing, so does the fragility of them, DVDs are easy enough to ruin, HD-DVDs will be even easier to do so, so my bets are on the BLU-Rays.
I totally agree with you, especially with the armor or whatever that Blu-Ray is going to be coated with. I think this technology will probably come in a CD like form as well, as that usually makes things easier to adopt. Maybe we will see BLU-Ray and HD-DVD drives or BLU-Ray and HVD drives? Who knows where technology will go. I do know though that to really be a competitor, most of these technologies really have to work hard on their nieche market.
As cool as these drives might sound, if there’s no support, then they’ll just end up being the next Zip drives, and so far, I’ve heard very little about them, or interest in them.
The way I see it, this technology is for the momment “papper-ware”.
I agree, though I do know many people that still use Zip drives. They may not have the penetration in the market that other technologies have, but Zip drives are not dead. And as such, most fringe technologies do see some light as they are created and marketed.
There is, in fact, a disc-based form of this technology. It holds up to 1 TB. As far as I’m aware, it’s still in the experimental stage, though.
#3 that is BS, i have been hearing about holographic technology for at least 5 years. sure it takes a little while for formats to be adopted(mainly because sony is such an interprise as to want to rule the fucking world, why don’t we just get microsoft to back up a new technology as well, then we will have hvd+ hvd- hvd3 hvdXP hvd Longhorn, and then none of them will ever get adopted) the reason you never hear about these things is because the competitors are to competative. WORK TOGETHER PEOPLE