Pioneer finds 20-layer 500GB Blu-ray Disc "feasible"
By Darren Murph 
posted Aug 5th 2008 1:15PM
posted Aug 5th 2008 1:15PM
Now here's a rate of progress we could get used to. Nary a month after Pioneer trumpeted a 400GB Blu-ray Disc, out pops another press release from the firm boasting about a 500 gigger with a score of layers. Based on research at its Tokyo headquarters, specifications have been drafted for an incredibly capacious 500GB BD. Granted, this very company already had plans for a 500GB optical disc nearly four years ago, but there's no time like the present to make this stuff a reality, right?[Via TrustedReviews, thanks xdragon]
Cool!!!!! Let me know when I can afford a BR player. :-/
hopefully the cheaper chinese players will find their way onto market before the end of the year so that the bigger names will have to try to undersell them by dropping MSRP... then everyone can enjoy REAL HD content :D
buy a ps3!
Yeah... a PS3 is not cheap.
You spend 2000$ on a full-hd TV, then you go BAWW THE PRICE on an 400$ Blu-Ray player
"BAWW THE PRICE"
I just spit coffee all over. That was damned funny.
Apart from being able to afford a BR Player, how about the 1080p 62" screen to go along with it. Oh, and don't forget that Sony soundbar. How about that leather sofa with the seat warmer and cup holder as well with a universal remote control and the remote control light dimmers. Now that I mention that, I think there is an Iphone app that does that. I
I'll say it again for good measure: they sell blu-ray players for computers for about $100 to $130, yeah yeah I know, you want standalone andsoforth.
thats bigger than my current hard drive :( this made me sad lol
Why sad?
Now you can finally burn all the p0rn on your drive to one convenient single 500GB disc, and allocate hd space for new p0rn downloads... sweet...
Look, if you're gonna use a zero in it, then it's spelled "pr0n".
Trust me on this: those disk will be more expensive than a 500GB HD.
I hope that comforts you.
GTA is going to have a hard time filling that...
More like MGS5
GTA: USA :D
word GenBanks...word.
Hehehe......gigger. Sorry, just love how sometimes techno-babble can be so accepted and yet sound so funny.
Love the picture of the cat with the ears down.
Oh yeah, I like the 500GB drive too.
Love the picture of the cat with the ears down.
Oh yeah, I like the 500GB drive too.
That s 25 times bigger than my current hd....
This tech would be sweet. An entire season of tv on one disk. I guess it would be useful for 1440p/2160p when it starts being used. Not enough space for 4320p though.
You need a bigger HDD.
Your hard drive is 20 gb? Shame on you.
Well my old laptop broke, right now until I buy a new one I am using a refurb dell thats a couple years old. I'm in wait for something special...
It's 62,5 times bigger then the harddrive in this computer. That's awesome!
im really glad sony blew a huge amount of money on blu-ray, because i hate sony quite a lot, and i'm glad to see how much they've wasted. 20 layers huh?]
if you put a one layered cd in the best cd burner available, you have about a 5% failure rate immediately, which is not to mention over a long time. trusting some chinese lowest bidder to find and utilize 20 optical layers on a plastic blu-ray disc with no errors is really far fetched.
so knock yourself out guys, keep on hoping for the best when you burn those discs, try not to keep track of the coasters, and definitely try to ignore that networking is getting faster, usb sticks are getting cheaper, and a 500gb hard drive is down to 50 bucks.
imagine scraping up a disc that has 500gb of important data on it.
cd's and dvds are on their way out, its time for the wild, off center, loud, unreliable media to disappear, and not a moment too soon.
More like "FAILsible." Ironically funny web 2.0 blogosphere internet memes.
lol. you mean on the way out when the internet catches up. Im hoping that change happens in 20 years or less. But if im in my 40s and I still need discs Ill be pissed off
let me know when i can download a Blu-ray quality film (not just 1080P, but over 20mbps too, with lossless audio) in less time than it takes me to go shopping, buy a disc, get stuck in traffic on the way home, make dinner, forget to watch the movie for a few days, and then put the disc in my player.
"because i hate sony quite a lot"
Beat you up in high school, hm?
How do you "hate" sony?
And...believe it or not, they are only part of the Blu Ray Alliance...so make sure you spread the hate evenly...
lol i never once burned a coaster from media failure in the last 10 years! Myabe i just been lucky, or use good media
but can it store Crysis?
You suck at life.
I understand the attempt at comedy, but I ask you why? The game clocks in at 6Gigs. =P
DVD9 can store Crysis.
The question is:
But can you math?
It could probably hold 20+ copies of the entire Crysis trilogy (and stand alone expansion pack), provided they individually don't go over 6gb.
Hooray, we'll have a backup solution that isn't just "more hard drives."
if they can put the whole back to the future trilogy on disk ill buy it
nilay ryan and josh wanna come over and watch??
Back to the Future?!?
Nah, what we need is another of those "Star Wars Trilogy: Director's Cut High Definition Blu-Ray Edition."
(hohoho, I kid)
@diode
Too late, it'll be your fault when it happens!
Maybe this will be the answer to more storage on the Wii.... j/k
This technolgy will last all of 2 seconds when holograpic memeory is brought to the front which I think Nintendo is playing a part of developing.
With the death of HD DVD, you would think that BR has the HD media market cornered. It does, but the adoption of it seems to be slower than while HD DVD was still around. BD movies are still much more expensive than DVDs. And with the majority of the consumers think their $50 upconverting DVD players does a good job so why would they bother spending $300 on a new player and $30-$35 on a blu-ray movie..
I don't think you get how it works. Why would Blu-ray be the same price as DVD after they won? Sure it's going to replace DVD but it's a higher quality format than DVD so it costs more. When Canon released the XSI did they make it the same price as the XTI? No, sure it's replacing the XTI but it wouldn't have made any sense for them to release it at the same price the XTI was currently selling for especially when it was better. Plus a lot of companies spend a lot of time in research, marketing, etc in Blu-ray. They want to make their money back, otherwise they would being seeing red for awhile. In due time prices will go down.
I'd be willing to bet that the majority of HDTV owners have their DVD players hooked up to their TV using composite cables, and still have no problem with the picture quality.
I think the only reason DVD got so popular over VHS was because it added "special features." People don't really care about picture quality.
Hell, I know more than a few people who think the definition of HDTV is "a tv that is flat and you can hang it on the wall."
Blu-ray's slow adoption rate is a result of consumer ignorance. Nobody knows what it's for outside of a few buzzwords that they don't really understand. I really doubt that there are a significant number of people who are holding off because they think their upconverting players give comparable picture quality. I would be *shocked* if a significant percentage of consumers have even heard of upconverting players.
currently, i'm satisfied with an upscaling dvd player. i'm plenty aware that it's not the same quality, but it is good enough for me. the major drawback to blu-ray for me isn't so much the players as the movies themselves. the cheapest ones are what? $25? i can get dvds of movies that i actually want for $5 or $6 now. i do have an hdmi cable from the dvd player to the tv though. mainly just because i like the idea of only needing one cable to do both audio and video because my tv isn't expensive so the hdmi only does so much.
@alex
Yes, the disks will be a bit higher price for a while, but this is not just about disk price. When Toshiba/Microsoft were giving away free movies with a HD DVD player, the BD fans were yelling that they were trying to buy the market. Sony announced that they were going to give away free movies, and it was a brilliant business move. Toshiba/Microsoft lowered the prices of their players, and the BD fans were yelling about subsidies. Sony lowered the price of the PS3, and it was a brilliant business move - even though the PS3 has never sold at nor above cost. There was talk about a low-cost Chinese HD DVD player, and the PS3 fans were saying that they would not be low quality junk, and yet the 2nd post to this article talks about how great it will be once Chinese BD players are released, it will be wonderful for the consumer. When HD DVD announced there would be a 51GB disk, there were shouts from the BD fans that it would not be compatible with existing players, but cheer on 500GB BD disks. When HD DVD has rich interactivity, the BD fans say that nobody watches extras, but when BD introduces 2.1 profile players, it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
The issue is that all of the advancements that HD DVD made forced BD to do the same. Now that HD DVD is dead, you no longer get 5 free movies (expired Jan 31st). The prices on players have not dropped (Sony said no PS3 price cuts because they spent their money on the war). Amazon used to have BOGO deals, once the deal active the day HD DVD died expired, the sales stopped. When HD was alive, there was a fury of releases from both sides, now that HD is no more, there have been no (IMO) good BD movies released except for what was once exclusive to HD DVD. And really, this has been the first bit of news from the BD group since HD DVD died.
That's a lot of info to break over your knee.
I'd like to see these used in PC's instead of hard drives... once the read speed on the drives speed up anyway. Wouldn't have to worry bout failing HD's anymore atleast... i guess no one know's the amount of stress these disk can take over a long time
I'm not really sure if a response is needed here. You want an Optical disk as your Hard Drive?
F......A.......I.......L
no, not exactly, but if i didn't have to worry about the damn thing f...a...i...l...i...n...g like HD's are known to do... Shit if flash memory was fast and cheap enough i'd that instead of a traditional HD if i could. Less moving parts = less chance of failure. Maybe i should explained more clearly before the trolls rolled out.
Feel free to explain what exactly you mean?
"I'd like to see these used in PC's instead of hard drives... "
In reference to that statement.
Yes fewer moving parts does mean more stability but flash drives weren't in question here. Don't call me a troll because I posted a reply to a comment that doesn't make any sense.
A 500gb optical disc spinning at a fast enough speed to replace a hard drive would be completely unreliable. I don't know if you old enough to remember the old 80x cd-roms but the discs used to shatter at high speeds. Optical can only go so far as it is. It's not storing the data that is a problem its accessing it.
And about the damn thing failing... everything breaks flash drives break just less often than hard drives. I've had two flash drives get corrupted and they are unusable.
Blu discs are a viable archive format period.
This is pretty pointless, really. In order to read that kind of disc, everyone would have to buy an all new expensive player. At that point it isn't an upgrade, it's a whole new format that just happens to be *based* on the Blu-ray spec.
you're right, we should never have stopped using sticks and rocks to kill animals to feed and clothe ourselves.
wait, we were supposed to stop killin animals with sticks n rocks? uh-oh...
actually, it would work with all existing players via firmware update... they use the exact same laser.... did you need to buy a new DVD player when to play dual layers? no? didnt think so.
I think 500gb is a lot of information. Also, I don't think it will ever become commercially practical. However, if this does come to fruition, I can see very long burn times in every DVD-bootlegger's future.
Be carefull what you say...you are the same kind of people that probably would have said the same thing when DVD debuted, "who needs all that space? Extra's? Fugk extras!"
Good old Bill Gates once said... who needs more that 64 K of memory anyways?
I think that should answer your concerns
I think the story was 640K, but yeah 500GB is nothing really.
20 Layers with that much data is a shakey deal at best, small scratches or easy errors are sure to pop up, as you all know the recording process is still an analog one, with the bumps written in the disc itself. The more bumps, the easier it is to mess up or misread. Idk, I thought the current size, or original size was enough ...sheesh...stick to tape drives to back up server enviroments, unless you want to spill coffee on your BD disc or scratch it only to lose your jorb haha. I'll stick to my hot swapable drive. As for movies in the store, I sure hope current players only require a firmware update for this...
also Blue ray is self repairing. I have often enough gone to pick up one of my BR discs and only to see a big scratch going right across the whole thing. Five minutes with a shamy cloth and the scratch is gone. THAT my friends is the difference, indestructible.
blu-ray disc has a hard coating that is scratch resistant. a blu ray disc is way more durable than a cd, dvd, or hd dvd. of course that contributed to its higher cost than hd dvd (irrelevant now...)
This will mean better graphics on PS3 games. Time to pack it in microsoft and concede defeat in the gaming wars. Because Sony always wins. A 500gb blue ray disc is a nice thing to read about, now we will have the room to make: MGS5 Big Boss, a GTA 5 titled GTA WORLD, Socom Complete Confrontation with 500 online players, Tony hawk like you've never experienced before ( clone of TH in the digital realm. @ Bluemanrule, people thought that DVD would never replace tape, guess what it did, now a 500 gb BR disc is about to do the same. As for burn times it would be no different than those of today's standard, the only thing is that you can leave the disc in the tray and keep burning it for years until you fill it up. I hate microsoft because they beat me up in middle school. nah j/k.
I hope you are kidding, because everybody knows ps3's graphics are worse than the x360's, and that probably won't improve unless they update their GPU AND expand their internal memory on it, because no matter how fast a GPU and CPU is if you got too little RAM which has to be shared too you WILL run into issues when trying to run games, even with huge cache's on the CPU die.
And they probably will need to update the blu-ray hardware anyway to read these high-capacity disks.
Be carefull what you say...you are the same kind of people that probably would have said the same thing when DVD debuted, "who needs all that space? Extra's? Fugk extras!"
Sorry for the odd post above me, the comment system here is so friggen wrong its not even remotely funny.
You're so friggin wrong that it is funny.
BUT DOES IT BLEND!?
I'll start burning now, it should finish in about 3 weeks!
AT the current market prices of Blu-Ray, a 500GB hard drive would be cheaper. Not to mention faster to write to.
But will it help the sony empire in getting money to hire some more rootkit coders and to finance the MPAA if you buy a HD? No it won't, see the issue there?
Hey guys, forget that blu-ray stuff! We're making an upconverting dvd player! It can play all your old dvds in super-mega-definition!
Already forgotten, if I need HD stuff I'll download it.
Look, if you're gonna use a zero in it, then it's spelled "pr0n".
I sense deja vu, I thought engadget posted this a couple months ago.
Although I do like the idea. 500GB of storage in an easy to carry form. Whoever makes it will instantly become a bootlegger's best friend.
Next step is adding a magnetic layer and putting a single disk in a 3.5" housing, this stuff is going places I tell you!
As long as it's not used for like, one big uncompressed movie (layer changes are too big a downside). It'd be nice to have a television series/season on one disk though.
I got a Blu-ray player for under 200 at www.consumerdepot.com it works great
If they keep adding layers then they're never release anything.