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Bare 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
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Optical drive OEMs & ORGs
Acer

Alera Technologies

BenQ

Calimetrics

Call/Recall

DVD±R Digest

dvdfile.com

DVD+RW Alliance

EMEDIA

EZQuest

Freecom Technologies

Hitachi

HP

IBM

I/OMagic

Iomega

JVC

Kano Technologies

LaCie

Lite-On IT

Memorex

Mitsubishi Kagaku Media

NEC

Pacific Digital

Panasonic

Pioneer Electronics

Plextor

Primera Technology

Procom Technology

Recordable DVD Council

Recording Media Association

Samsung Electronics

Sony

StorageHeaven

THOMSON multimedia

Toshiba

VBrick Systems

Verbatim

Yamaha
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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
.
read article by Plasmon
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

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