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Media Exposed - Looking at Optical Media Archiving |
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| HD DVD
Retires Early..................... |
Editor:-
February 18, 2008 - industry rumors speculate that Toshiba may pull the
plug on its HD DVD standard conceding to Blu-ray.
Blu Ray
marketers will be rejoicing - but this media war is a side issue.
4
years ago in an article called
Do CDs and DVDs Have a Long
Term Future? I warned that the 20 year long run of removable consumer
optical media which started with the CD - would come to an early end because
internet downloads would eventually replace physical disks as the primary form
of non broadcast movie distribution.
...Later:- next day in a
press
release commenting about this market shift
Strategy Analytics opined...
Blu-ray
Disc's victory over HD-DVD is the first battle in a much longer struggle. A
major challenge lies ahead if the industry is to persuade hundreds of millions
of DVD owners that they should switch to a completely new format. DVD players
costing less than $100 can already offer HD-like video quality through upscaling
techniques. The industry must now unite behind a major promotional campaign to
push Blu-ray Disc as the preferred optical disc standard for the high definition
age.
"Blu-ray Disc has passed its first real test by beating HD-DVD,"
says David Mercer, Principal Analyst at Strategy Analytics. "But a much
bigger challenge now lies ahead if BD is to become as successful as DVD, and
content owners, retailers and manufacturers must now demonstrate that they can
work together to promote BD effectively."
Strategy Analytics predicts that cumulative sales of stand-alone
Blu-ray Disc players excluding games consoles, PCs and other devices will reach
more that 100 million units worldwide by 2012.
New SoC for Universal Optical Disk Player Designers
Las Vegas, NV -
January 7, 2008 - Broadcom Corp today announced a new reference
design platform for OEMs developing HD optical disc players.
The
BCM 97440 reference design is built around Broadcom's 7440 (currently
shipping in players made by Samsung and LG) which is the industry's only
single-chip solution that fully supports the requirements of both Blu-ray Disc
and HD DVD standards.
With 2 high definition optical disc media
player options currently available, consumers are often confused when it comes
to choosing one format over the other. The BCM97440 reference design alleviates
this industry dilemma by providing media player manufacturers with the design
tools capable of meeting the demanding processing requirements of both Blu-ray
Disc and HD DVD standards.
...Broadcom profile,
optical drives,
storage chips
TiVo Verifies WD's My DVR Expander
LAKE
FOREST, Calif - October 23, 2007 - WD today announced that its My
DVR Expander drives are verified compatible with TiVo HD and Series3 digital
video recorders.
The
500GB My DVR
Expander external hard drive ($199.99) is capable of storing up to 300 hours
of digital standard-definition or up to 60 hours of high-definition
television programming.
...WD profile
New Aleratec DVD/CD Disc Repair System
CHATSWORTH,
Calif - August 27, 2007 - Aleratec, Inc. introduces its new DVD/CD
Disc Repair CG that removes most light, medium, or heavy scratch damage from any
DVD or CD.
The commercial grade disc repair system will
repair most damaged discs in as quickly as 5 minutes. It includes 2 500ml
bottles of finishing solution, repair pads, a 3 1/2" disc holder that makes
fixing scratched 5" and 3 1/2" discs as easy as 1-2-3 and it is
powered by a 1/4 HP motor. All you have to do is fill the unit with the
Aleratec disc finishing solution, load your disc, turn the timer to desired time
and let it run. Scratched discs come out in near new condition. ESP is $525.
...Aleratec profile,
Storage Testers
Call/Recall Aims Death Ray at DVD / Blu-ray Optical Archiving
SAN DIEGO - June 27, 2007 - Call/Recall
Inc. today announced availability of licensing for its patented optical
storage technology that can provide 40x the capacity of Blu-ray and over
200x the capacity of DVD technology.
Call/Recall's
innovative optical storage technology utilizes a 2-photon recording process to
record bits in a 3 dimensional volume in a disk. Multiple layers of information
can be stored with less than a 10-micron layer of separation, effectively
allowing the equivalent of 250 conventional DVD layers to be put onto one DVD.
Call/Recall's technology uses affordable, commercially available,
off-the-shelf components. This approach allows optical hardware manufacturers to
extend the roadmap of their existing technologies, such as DVD and Blu-ray while
maintaining backward compatibility with their installed base.
...Call/Recall
profile | |
|
 |
Megabyte
could get 5,000 TV channels on
his satellite system. But sometimes he just
liked to watch old movies on DVD. | |
| . |
first published
January 2007
Don't be Taken in by Blu Ray vs DVD Sophistry |
News stories from vendors are a valuable source of market information -
but they can sometimes create a misleading expectation of what could happen
when they talk about predicting technology trends.
Vendors
understandably talk up their market's growth prospects by citing optimistic
analyst predictions.
The reason is that most buyers are cautious and don't want to be the first to
get burned by the bugs in a new technology. By suggesting that a new market will
be very big, or will grow very fast, or has already reached a critical mass -
vendors hope that buyers will be more confident and move faster along the new
technology adoption curve.
I can tell you from decades of tracking
such technology predictions that they often turn out to be as inaccurate as
getting an opinion from your pet dog or cat. But until markets become
established so that it's possible to track revenue or other historic data -
comparing crystal ball images is as good as it gets - and makes for interesting
editorial too.
Take the case of what's happening now in the consumer
optical storage market.
A simple search on
Google
shows that many editors and analysts have bought into the market model currently
being pushed by manufacturers who are recycling the "Betamax versus VHS"
legend as an analog for the "High Definition DVD versus Blu Ray"
market.
It's a seductive argument (for both sides) because it leads you
down a tunnel in which you are left thinking that the future of buying and
storing big globs of portable entertainment has to be one or the other. But
that's not necessarily so.
Instead of the Betamax / VHS case study so
beloved by commentators I'd like to call to your attention another old (and
mostly forgotten) but more recent example - which is much closer to home - the
battle of the Super Floppies.
What seemed at stake in the mid 1990s
was:- what format would replace the 3.5" floppy drive? - an appendage
which once adorned hundreds of millions of PCs.
Competing for
attention were several incompatible formats by
Iomega, Samsung
and Sony. As we now know none of these royal claimants took
possession of the floppy throne. Instead a republic was declared.
Most
people found out they could exchange information much more conveniently using
email instead of thin plastic wallets. And software publishers found that CDs
were a more appropriate form of software distribution rather than boxed sets of
floppies. The floppy drive slot was replaced by a CD and then later DVD drive -
and not by a super floppy drive.
Fast forward to today's digital
entertainment storage and distribution market (which is the setting for the Blu
Ray vs HD DVD debates.
The simplest way to sell content is via the
internet.
The simplest way to store hundreds of movies on a single
storage device is on a single big
hard disk.
I
wrote an
article saying something
similar back in 2004 - and neither the appearance of holographic storage nor UDO
etc has changed my view.
True - a lot of boxes will get sold with slots
which are compatible with shiny looking coated plastic disks in the next few
years - but there's a significant probability that the Super Optical market
could soon go the way of the Super Floppies - and that neither Blu Ray nor HD
DVD have a long future.
See also:- previous article:-
the Future of
High Speed Disk Drives for Servers | |
| . |
 |
Bare Media
Exposed - Looking at the Contenders for Optical Media Archiving - article by
Plasmon
Optical archiving has become a legally mandated
storage technology in many markets. There are a lot of new optical media
technologies and packaging formats to choose from. But which ones will stand the
test of time in terms of data reliability and cost of ownership?
Plasmon, founded in 1987, has nearly 2 decades of experience as a
systems and media supplier in the optical archiving industry. This article by
Steve Tongish, Plasmon's Director of Marketing EMEA, looks at the critical
factors for the new products now available and those emerging so you can assess
which will work best for you. ... read the article,
...Plasmon profile,
Optical Libraries | | |
