Good morning,
kids. Are you ready for the optical disc format of the day? It's Hitachi Maxell's 1TB stacked volumetric optical disc
(SVOD) array, comprised of rather thin DVD-size discswith DVD-size capacities: 9.4GB total storage each on two
92µm thick data layers. Yeah, we know, we promised a terabyte; well, watch and learn. These polycarbonate discs
may be too thin to be manufactured from typical plastics, but they can be stacked in an optical array 100 tall, and 6.5
x 13.3 x 16.1cm (2.5 x 5.2 x 6.3-inches) in size. Even though Hitachi Maxell wants to make the terabyte carts relatively
cheap at ¥40,000 (about $340 US) and claims there are consumer applications, don't toss that
HD DVD player just yet. It's
pretty easy to realize why optical arrays are really of only limited utility for the end-user; if these should ever be
popularized, we'd imagine it would serve first as data archival medium for businesses before you'd ever outfit your rig
with, like, the high def optical disc system, dude.
[Thanks,
Andrew]
