Tera-Discs To Blow Away Blu-Ray and HD-DVD?
- Scribbled on August 27th, 2007 by Jonah Falcon
- Filed in Blu-Ray/HD-DVD, Industry News, WTF
Tech UK is reporting a startling new disc storage technology that could end the HD war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray: the Tera-Disc.
Blu-ray and HD DVD have pushed the limits of optical storage further than anyone thought possible. But a new technology has emerged which makes Blu-ray’s 50GB capacity look tiny. Mempile in Israel says it’s able to fit an incredible 1TB of data onto one “TeraDisc” which is the same size as CDs and DVDs. That’s 20 times the capacity of a maxed-out dual-layer Blu-ray disc.
The incredible capacity achieved using this new technology is made possible by employing 200 5GB layers, each one only five microns apart. The discs are completely transparent to the red lasers which are used in the associated recorder.
How much data?
On a 1TB disc, you could store:
- 212 DVD-quality movies
- 250,000 MP3 files
- 1,000,000 large Word documents
Can you say, “HOLY CRAP”?
August 27th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Not happening. Blu-Ray and HD DVD aren’t catching on so much, and even if they did, people won’t go to ANOTHER format so soon.
August 27th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Oh? You could have all 88 discs of Frasier and Cheers on one TeraDisc. Own BOTH series’ entire runs.
August 27th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
I don’t see this storage technology taking over but it’s an important technological advancement nonetheless.
August 28th, 2007 at 1:21 am
I think it’s just regular dvd’s but instead of dual layer it’s 200 layers, meaning the technology is in place, people will need new players, but they won’t cost 500 dollars
August 28th, 2007 at 2:33 am
I doubt these will be cheap enough to produce for a long time. Besides, a 1TB disc is mass overkill for the home video market. This article makes it sound like these discs would be used for movie releases, but I don’t see the point, when most releases just have one film on the disc. Don’t get me wrong, the technology is cool, but when most people don’t see the need to move on to Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, I don’t see why they’d be quick to adopt an even larger, more expensive format. I think this has some awesome potential, just not in the home video arena.
August 28th, 2007 at 2:35 am
dvds r starting to annoy me wen u hav to back up over 100gb of data but blue ray is just so darn expensive =(
August 28th, 2007 at 2:42 am
no big news.
this a less sophisticated version of an FMD (flourescent multi-layer disc) which uses 6 flourescent layers and additive color to describe state
which by the way had proof of concept in 1998
August 28th, 2007 at 2:42 am
Like ever body else , I don’t see this catching on until these disc (along with the readers) are widely available and with the same price as normal CD’s.
With this you can store The contents of 728,177 3½-inch Floppy Disc into one of disc. (we have come a long way since the 8-inch 79.7kb floppies
August 28th, 2007 at 2:45 am
any news on when this will be availible to the general public?
August 28th, 2007 at 2:47 am
Sure is amazing, but only real reason to need it is for single-disc backups.
August 28th, 2007 at 2:51 am
$$$$$$$$$$$??????????
August 28th, 2007 at 3:00 am
@ jonahfalcon:
jeez i’d rather just switch the disc than scroll through all those episodes…
August 28th, 2007 at 3:02 am
Backing up all my audio work on tera disks would be a great thing. I can see it being a huge part of the post production world. Disks with thousands of SFX libraries. That’s brilliant.
August 28th, 2007 at 3:12 am
If you just read all these comments then you and I are in the same boat. Doesn’t this just follow the rule that technology advancement increase exponentially by some retarded # I never bothered to memorize. Next year I’m playing some insanely large metric numbered file on some insanely small metric numbered device…. The only thing that is surprising to me is that the US can’t use the effing metric system. Yeesh
August 28th, 2007 at 3:21 am
You know just like most others would say its not something that would catch on although it would be great for video games since it has so much space a game like Grand Theft Auto could be HUGE!
August 28th, 2007 at 3:49 am
anything that can store massive amounts of pron will win. let that industry make the jump to this format, if ever possible, and we have a viable, marketable product. The transfer possibilities are immense. I worry about the stability of such a disc. Just imagine the speed at which a drive would need to rotate in order to absorb and process that massive amount of information. It will catch on sooner than later. People always need more space, and a Terabyte of space should satiate any consumer’s need to worry less about running out of space.
August 28th, 2007 at 4:21 am
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August 28th, 2007 at 4:23 am
This could be used to make cheaper Hard drives but if layers are so tiny maybe a simple scratch will delete a lot of memory thats bad.
August 28th, 2007 at 4:30 am
The article states:
On a 1TB disc, you could store:
* 212 DVD-quality movies
* 250,000 MP3 files
* 1,000,000 large Word documents
Oh, and 150 million thoroughly confused consumers. No thanks.
August 28th, 2007 at 4:42 am
Tera-Discs To Blow Away Blu-Ray and HD-DVD? | Game Stooge…
I dont think there is a need for this now but I would love to put my DVD collection and watch whatever movie I want from one disc….
August 28th, 2007 at 4:57 am
I’d love to be able to back up my hard drive on one disc, that’s for damned sure.
August 28th, 2007 at 4:58 am
Consumer Product release or it didnt happen.
August 28th, 2007 at 5:02 am
Well, each disc would be permanently stored in a caddy. You slide the entire caddy in, not the disc itself, into the drive. That way, external objects like hands and sharp objects never touch the sruface.
August 28th, 2007 at 5:07 am
Imagine how long it will take to burn a 1TB disc. Wow.
August 28th, 2007 at 5:21 am
Not as long as you think.
It’s not a bigger disc. It uses layers. Less mechanical movement. And the technology probably has a speedier read/write, too.
August 28th, 2007 at 5:44 am
It sounds like just what we need(just what I need anyway) I hear people shouting “we don’t need all that capacity” I can remember when people were saying the same about DVD’s compared to CD’s and that wasn’t too long ago either. I may fall into the minority here but I’m using 1TB every 3 months. Now If I had one of those disk writers I could put my entire film library on a few disks and my entire music library on one. The creators of games and HD technology won’t have the present restrictions of disc space and many things won’t need to be compressed as much as they are now. We will see amazing increases in video and sound quality and then we’ll be asking ourselves “how did we ever manage with a mere 4.7Gb DVD?”
August 28th, 2007 at 6:02 am
This is not about to replace Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD support multiple layers (like DVDs) and can reach 1 TB with enough of them.
TDK tested a prototype player/drive that is capable of reading 200 GB, 8-layer Blu-Ray disks– not that any exist yet.
40 layer disk is all that would be required to reach 1 TB verses the 200 layers this new disc technology employs.
August 28th, 2007 at 6:10 am
so am guessing if this technology ever comes by, the drives will be backward compatible with existing DVD … bluray and HD DVDs …
right ?
August 28th, 2007 at 6:21 am
Three words: porn, warez, backups
August 28th, 2007 at 6:44 am
The teradisc may become popular sooner than you think. As TVs keep getting bigger 1080p really isn’t enough resolution. Have you seen 1080p on a 60″ TV? If 4k becomes popular this type of disc will be required. I would love to see the HD-DVD/Bluray war end by having another disc beat them both.
August 28th, 2007 at 6:47 am
I think the teradisc could be used for little more than backups, but I don’t see it being a video standard. The future video standard will be either totally web based (like the new high-def flash) or totally downloadable. Physical storage mediums should be obsolete.
If content size and internet speed progress fast enough, 1tb will be a godsend. I remember a few years ago burning everything on cdrs and finding them too small like I’m finding dvds too small today.
August 28th, 2007 at 6:53 am
I think you are all missing the point, neither blu-ray or hd-dvd will win in the way the dvd format won or vhs won. The reason, DOWNLOADS… internet speeds are ever increasing to the point where people now watch films over the internet, give it another 5 years and the cable companies will realize the potential of there tubes, backup online in minutes! Lose this attachment to physical storage (cd,s etc).
August 28th, 2007 at 7:06 am
Nonsense how stable the data will be?
August 28th, 2007 at 7:37 am
Great technology, but it all depends on its read write speed…
if its an RW, a normal dvd takes 24 min to write to , this suggests that the teradisk would take 4 days to write to.
and even if it were 5 times as fast, it would take 0.8 days to write to.
would you wait that much..
Its still great to store 11 seasons of seinfeld …
http://www.ose.tuxfamily.org
August 28th, 2007 at 8:22 am
This won’t catch on until the media companies find enough junk to stuff the disk full and only include a single piece of content. It’s highly unlikely that they would be willing to put an entire series or season from a show on a single disk, as it would change consumer expectations about what a ‘unit’ means and probably end up driving down the price. Lame-o.
August 28th, 2007 at 8:39 am
I would hate to get a small scratch on my Tera-disc and lose 50 gigs of information.
August 28th, 2007 at 8:48 am
Great.
I’ve got a terabyte drive in my recording studio/office and I’m going to run out of room, (in about about a year [and I'm only doing audio production. I'd be backing everything to DVD and sucking on vacuum if I was doing video.])
August 28th, 2007 at 9:06 am
Could you imagine having to sit through 200 layer changes during the movie?!?
August 28th, 2007 at 10:06 am
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August 28th, 2007 at 10:49 am
Thats freaking sweet guy. Thats future technology for you. And just because its going to “replace” current technology, doesn’t mean you can’t get less space. I think its awesome putting all your favorite series on a disc. Take a while to burn, but hey if they can create a disk they can create a hell of a burner…hopefully!
August 28th, 2007 at 10:51 am
You’re kidding right? Go look up optical storage on Wikipedia. You can find leads to a dozen other technologies that are being worked on some with over 100 TB of storage. They aren’t commercally viable yet, and they won’t be for years.
August 28th, 2007 at 11:04 am
This is not about to replace HDDVD and Bluray, more layers, much more expensive, and because it has a cartridge its stuck inside, it wont be backwards compatible. You stick the whole cartridge in, its totally retarded.
August 28th, 2007 at 11:30 am
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August 28th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
[...] when you started to separate your Blue-ray from your HD-DVD, along comes something called Tera-discs. “Tera” is loosely translated as “fucking [...]
August 28th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
[...] +Just when you started to separate your Blue-ray from your HD-DVD, along comes something called Tera-discs. “Tera” is loosely translated as “fucking gigantic!” [Game Stooge] [...]
August 28th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
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August 28th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
I would hate to get a small scratch on my Tera-disc and lose 50 gigs of information.
Read before you comment:
Well, each disc would be permanently stored in a caddy. You slide the entire caddy in, not the disc itself, into the drive. That way, external objects like hands and sharp objects never touch the sruface.
August 28th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
I needed this technology 1 year ago, I am tired of buying another 500gb to store my data. The unfortunate thing is that this is not coming to market. It sounds great but by the time it comes to market IT will be outdated like Blueray and HDDVD were outdated when they hit the market. The problem we have come to in technology is not creating it, it is dreaming of what we need next.
I would love to know who thought oh I know we will put an extra 20GB on the disk that will be great!
Storage much greater potential that more layers, I remember reading in a book the author talked about instead of seeing data in 0’s and 1’s i.e. black/white that color could store much more data in the same space. Why is this not investigated?
What is the failure rate going to be for a disk with 20 layers 5 microns thick?
Having my cd get scratched was bad enough but at least some of the data was recoverable but with this multi layered data nightmare, now 1000x my data is unrecoveralble!!!
Ugh, maybe this should be the ipod killer too, oh yes and vote for Ron Paul, and evolutions pwn creationists again… where are all the creationists, oh the evolutionists created them to have someone to argue with….
August 28th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Personally, I’d love to have one of these as in external USB/Firewire enclosure and use it as cheap data storage sometime in the future. Would make backup data storage via Hard Drives, tape backups and burn to DVDs a thing of the past.
August 28th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Personally, I’d love to have one of these as in external USB/Firewire enclosure and use it as cheap data storage sometime in the future. Would make backup data storage via Hard Drives, tape backups and burn to DVDs a thing of the past.
August 28th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
These things could be viable for the market within 2 years. As some have said, if it gets scratched it could lose you alot of information. But think of how durable DVD’s are. I have one that i tested, suing 300 grit sandpaper, about 4 circles around the thing. And it still works perfectly. I am sure that since the tera-disk will be more fragile, that they will have a stronger and more resillient protective coating. If not, it could be designed inside of a thin catridge to protect it. Which frankly would be a good idea at that stage.
Nowdays 1Tb is not that much information. Hell, a school server(only 900 studens 7-12th) i worked on recently had about 2.3 Tb on it. As for write speeds, because of the stronger materials, the disc can reach a higher RPM without reaching the stress threshold. This means faster read/write times, and decreased delay. Trust me, if they want to make this a viable means of storage, they will have to make it fast, durable, portable, and inexpensive.
I do agree that it would be insane if they combined the Blue-Ray dual layer tech with this, that would be what? 50Tb or so?(50gb*100(blueray=dual layer)=5000gb, which is about 5Tb)
I hope this comes out on the market soon though, like others i.. “collect” videos and series.
August 28th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Can you say SCAM?
Next thing you know there will be e-mails circulating encouraging people to invest in this “technology.”
Even if reading 500 layers was practical, which isn’t, can you imagine the expense of producing a disk that has to have 500 separate layers pressed into it? What happens if there’s a defect in one of those layers?
Think about how much it costs to buy a 2 layer DVD-R today. Do you really think increasing mechanical complexity is going to reduce prices?
People like having one movie per disc because it’s easy to sort them and find them. What studio would care if they could fit that much data on a disc, even if it were possible?
Still not convinced?
200 layers * 5 microns = 1000 microns.
1000 microns = 1mm
Current thickness of a CD: 1.2mm
That leaves just .1mm of space for a protective layer on either side of the disc.
Oh, but wait, we haven’t even considered thickness variation of the layers. Do you have any idea how hard it would be to have a consistent 5um thickness across the surface of the entire disk?
How about the variation in thickness from layer to layer?
This is absurd, and it will go nowhere, just like all the other claims of a high-layer-density discs over the last ten years.
August 28th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
1 rewritable disk like that will be enough to a whole life…
August 28th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
I didn’t read all of the comments, but there probably isn’t going to be another huge format because we don’t want psychical disc’s anymore. When we can have all of are movies streaming from our computer to the tv whats the point of disc’s.
August 28th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
I think it will take many years before Tera Disc can defeat Blu Ray …
Because the investation must be very huge …
August 28th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
No one is mentioning the fact that on a disc with such large storage capacity you could keep audio and video that are MUCH higher quality than the current standard. Being an audiophile, I’m kind of pissed off that mp3’s became much more popular than something like DVD-audio. Maybe with a tera-disc we could actually start emphasizing quality again (that’s what CDs were for, remember?) instead of having to compress our music into a barely-recognizable state.
August 28th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Remember when they said that 1x was the maximum speed for CD-ROM’s? Bring it on (soon), I have a lot of data to store and don’t want to haul around a ton of discs anymore.
August 28th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
both HDvd and Blueray is damn expensive.
August 28th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
This is absurd, and it will go nowhere, just like all the other claims of a high-layer-density discs over the last ten years…
Yup it is absurd…just like the invention of the airplane, telephone, space travel, television, radio, automobile, computers…need I go on?
You’re in pretty good company for those who said those things above were absurd too.
Btw, did you know that the world isn’t flat?
August 28th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
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August 29th, 2007 at 12:24 am
Red lasers?
Won’t be long before they come out with Blu-Tera Discs!
August 29th, 2007 at 3:52 am
Who needs that much space anyways.
there are already 200gb Blu-ray disks thats enough for a long time.
August 29th, 2007 at 4:22 am
Yeah its a great breakthrough but it will hardly be an competitor for blue ray / hddvd. It will probably be commercially available for the next generation of formats.1TB might not be so much if ultra high def replaces HD. I think it has 16 times the resolution of HD so if the storage size goes up 16 times then it will comparative to a HD film on Blue Ray. Not that I could ever really see the need for 7,680 × 4,320 resolution a 42″ tv. As said before it is likely that physical disks will be a thing of the past anyways. Though I guess people do enjoy collecting things like CDs/LPs over downloading MP3s
August 29th, 2007 at 10:36 am
How about petabytes ?
(No animals were harmed in the making of this disc? – ed.)
August 30th, 2007 at 2:55 am
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August 31st, 2007 at 12:34 am
what about a zotsabyte they should make a zotsa disc that will probably store every song on that every movie every game a ass load of crap thats will definatley beat the tera disc and blu ray disc and hd dvd
August 31st, 2007 at 1:19 am
It’ll be great as a storage medium, but since HD-DVD is apparently on the way out, and Blu-ray is barely even being the adopted standard for HD movie playback, I don’t see TeraDisc being a serious threat for the forseeable future. Hell, Blu-ray disc burners for PCs run about 500 bucks nowadays. What would one of these TeraDisc burners cost, 2000 dollars? 3000 dollars? Many people can barely afford the 500 dollar cost of a Blu-ray burner in their PC, let alone something that has a terabyte capacity. Blu-ray technology has just very recently been made somewhat economically accessible to the general public. The public isn’t ready for another technology that, as of yet, isn’t even viable.
August 31st, 2007 at 11:49 am
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August 31st, 2007 at 1:55 pm
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September 3rd, 2007 at 10:50 pm
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September 13th, 2007 at 3:54 am
wtf? TDK already created a 8 layer Blu ray disk capeable of holding 1.5TB
October 18th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
The tera disc is gona hit the shelves in 2010 but it wont catch on for at least 5 years. its come a long way since the punch cards and back the the concept of even having the amount of storage we have on a cd today was literally out of this world as there was no need for it. As video graphics and games and movie quality increase. i would say we will be using optical discs over several hundreds of terabytes big by 2050 and thats why a team of japanese scientist are reasearching on how to make petabyte discs. Im a graphics desighner and work for Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). we used over 100 petabytes of storage in the making of pirates of the caribbean and i use have 5 petabyts of storage at home and i am not alone as other people st my workplace have more than that. In my recent experiance and view we will have movie quality 50 times better than hd by 2050 and that will easily fill a terabyte disc and that also applies to games. Just thought i would let you know. But all i can say is that the petabyte disc is still on the drwaing boards. Ps the drive 4 the teradisc will cost round about £2000 and the teradiscs coast the same amount to produce as normal dvds so there price will be fairly low but they will start at $1 for 5GB’s and will eventually get as low as a normal dvd would cost over a period of 5 -7 years. movies and games that look so life like you wouldn’t tell the difference between whats real and what isn’t are 30 years off from becoming a reality. this sounds crazy but we have learn’t that anything that sounds crazy now won’t be so crazy in a few decades, like how they thought that you would meltif you travelled faster than 40 mph in the early days of the car and how crazy a gig of memory sounded 30 years ago. hold on tight coz this is just the start of the digital age.
October 21st, 2007 at 7:53 pm
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November 1st, 2007 at 7:52 am
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January 9th, 2008 at 6:04 am
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March 28th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
LOL I remember the Day when the CDR cost $3500 so a today paying $3500 for a Tera-Disc Burner wouldnt be nothing
I’d be happy to pay that for storing that much data on a disc. I’d just hate seeing the $200 Coasters again
September 14th, 2008 at 10:55 am
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October 20th, 2008 at 9:16 am
LMAO! Tera disks!? Who’s going to pay THAT price? I’ll wait for Blu-Ray to come down and use that medium.