Japanese researchers devise method for cramming 42GB on a DVD

Never mind those fancy BD-R critters, how's about a 42GB DVD? Researchers with a good deal more intelligence than us over at Tohoku University have reportedly figured out a way to "multiply the amount of data that can be stored on a DVD or CD by 9." Based on our best guess at translating a foreign language (we kid... sort of), the achievement was realized by shaping the pits on a DVD's surface like Vs, essentially making the disc more capacious in the process. Unfortunately, said project will probably never see any mainstream attention, as existing DVD / CD players won't recognize the malformed media, and worse still, the process can't be applied to Blu-ray Discs.

[Via CrunchGear]

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 28th 2008 6:12PM]

I think a lot of posters aren't realizing that new media wouldn't be necessary, as regular DVDs are being used, which means all some company would have to do is come up with a reader/writer using this tech and voila... we have a 0.3 CENT / Gigabyte backup medium. I think a lot of companies would pay for this, even at quite a cost as the savings due to Media cost would be enormous.

[mp3 Posted Jun 29th 2008 8:25PM]

Why tease us with a format that will never become mainstream ?

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 1st 2008 9:29PM]

No. No. No.

This format offers absolutely nothing that BluRay isn't already accomplishing.

The only seeming advantage is the cheap price of DVD-R's, but would anyone spend $200 for a new type of recorder just to save money on discs. Don't forget that DVD-R media used to be really expensive. BluRay media will drop when/if demand increases.

It's interesting to note that DVD media is cheaper than CD media and not just on a Price per Gigabyte comparison. Hey, I know, let's increase the density of CD media and... uh.. oh.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 8th 2008 2:30PM]

yea but pioneer now have 500 gb bluerays so its moot