Coming soon: Holographic Versatile Disc
Six companies, including Fuji Photo and CMC Magnentics, have formed a consortium to promote HVD technology, which will let consumers conceivably put a terabyte (1TB) of data onto a single optical disc. The consortium said an HVD disc could hold as much data as 200 standard DVDs and with a transfer speed of over 1 gigabit per second, or 40 times faster than a DVD. HVD is a possible successor to technologies such as Blu-ray and HD DVD. Single layer Blu-ray discs hold about 25GB of data while Dual-Layer discs can contain 50GB. DVD discs, meanwhile, hold up to 8.5GB. HVD technology will be pitched at corporations and the entertainment market, the HVD Alliance said.
The organization, however, is looking at first developing discs with lower capacities. The first assignments of the technical committee involve coming up with standards for a 200GB recordable disc and a 100GB read-only disc. If history is an indication, consumers will fill the disc up. High-definition broadcasting and gaming are also expected to add a heavy burden to existing home storage systems because of the size of the files. Two hours of HD programming take up about 15GB to 25GB. Michiko Nagai of CNET Japan contributed to this story from Tokyo.
Related Stories» HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray: who cares? 24/12/2004» DVD formats war: Round two 27/01/2005 » Blu-ray and HD-DVD coming together? 25/04/2005 » TDK does 100GB capacity Blu-ray discs 20/05/2005 » Next-gen DVD format blues 06/07/2005 | ||||||||
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