Pioneer shows off 16-layer 400GB Blu-ray Disc, affirms compatibility with current players
By Darren Murph 
posted December 2nd 2008 7:35AM
posted December 2nd 2008 7:35AM
posted December 2nd 2008 7:35AM
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"I wonder what we could put on a 400GB disc?"
"corporate users would like it as an archiving medium"
So you just answered your own question! lol!
Also, how about home-workers like myself? I certainly don't want to be messing about with tape drives & their media, nor do I want to use lots of bandwidth for an online backup option, and I certainly don't want to pay the cost and 'leccy for a load of redundant hard drives to store data on.
At the end of the day, so long as the BD discs are kept in a cool, dark, dry environment they'll easily last for a decade or more...
Ever higher video quality perhaps... Higher bitrate, more complex extra features (entire video games in the movie extras bundled with the film?) higher resolution? 1080p isn't the height of attainable home screen resolution :)
how about a complete TV season on one disc? or even a complete TV SERIES on one disc....no more Season 1, Vol. 1 etc for Transformers cartoons, etc....
Not, it's obviously not the height of resolution, but it's approaching the height of what is useful in most situations. It's already well known that even 1080p largely goes to waste on TVs
My comment got cut off by using a less than symbol... I meant to say it goes to waste on TVs less than 50" at standard viewing distances. Going higher than 1080p will mean that you will need an even bigger TV or sit even closer to truly make out the detail. Something like QuadHD might be useful for gigantic 100" TVs or projections systems, but it will be largely useless for the vast majority of users. But, of course, that doesn't mean you can market and sell them.
Dale1v lol, thats the first good comment ive read for a while!
It could reduce the number of discs in a multi-disc package. For example, BluRay supports a maximum of 48mbit/s for AV data (audio and video combined). This means that a current 50GB disc can store roughly 142 minutes of content (again, at highest bitrates). That's enough for a single movie, since actual bitrates can be adjusted lower.
A 400GB disc would bump that up to roughly 1138 minutes of content at the same bitrate (no doubt Lucas will be pleased). That's enough for an entire 24-episode season of an hour-long show (assuming 45 minutes per episode, after commercials are removed).
So, being able to store an entire HD season on a single disc is certainly a big advantage.
Even if BD holds 1TB, they will still release TV shows on 10 discs and 1 hour movies with extras on 4 discs to make money. I was so excited to see Band of Brothers on BD, but it's just as many discs as DVD. Why?
That is just because 50GB blu-ray holds about the same length of video in 1080p as DVDs did with standard def.
Man, how many times does this have to be hammered into people's heads?
It's a DATA disc, NOT a BD designed for movies.
Like, you know, 400gb to 1TB backups... Data.
-Pie
Maybe the only place for this thing is corporate backups? I bet the price per gig makes it meaningless for consumers.
That is why Blu-ray isn't having the popularity that DVD had. To be as mainstream as the DVD is, they need to lower prices on their recordable discs and drives for computers ASAP. I'm pretty sure I'm not the first one waiting for the price drop to start backing up 25Gb on a single disc.
Also the transfer speeds on blue is crap, correct?
I wonder how long till 1TB disks are being sold in packs of 100 for $4.99 buy one get one free?
If you use a paper punch, you can double the capacity!
How about making the existing technology more affordable and available to the public first? The 25GB blanks are outrageously expensive and the players themselves still haven't hit a price level for wide consumer acceptance.
With this thing coming out into the market, the prices of lower end BD products will obviously fall. That's what has happened with every piece of electronics since forever. I thought that was pretty simple to see.
Disc be damned. I guess you need to be an athlete or rich fart to qualify to that arm candy: http://gawker.com/5099892/following-hallowed-nerd-tradition-michael-phelps-dates-asian-chick
I can't wait to see a PS3 game that's 400GB.. And Steve Jobs said that Bluray was useless.. What a douche.
Steve Jobs also said his pancreas was useless. Look where that got him!
". . .and you know you'll be waiting for the latest and greatest."
If you continually wait for the latest and greatest, you usually wind up purchasing nothing and waiting for everything.
WHO Cares about the Blu Ray disc!!!! I want the chick in the picture......
And the XBOTs actually thought HD-DVD had a shot! :-D
I don't really believe that it's compatible with current players. With many of them, perhaps. With all of them, I don't really buy it. In general if you haven't tested it, you can assume it doesn't work, and all existing players were shipped before there was an 16-layer disc to test with.
As another bummer, adding layers doesn't increase read rate. And you can't read multiple layers at once. So no matter how fast BluRay drives get, reading a 16-layer disc will take 8x as long as reading a 2-layer disc. Writing too.
I dont know if some other reader commented on this but we need to stop thinking about how much space can we cram onto plastic inexpensive discs. how about we start making the production cost of flash lower. Hardware encryption, dont have to worry about scratching your flash drive, faster read and write speeds.... i dont know but i think optical discs should be obsolete by now.
spinning is so much cooler than not spinning...
Wow!! I'm not surprised by the size but I AM surprised that it's compatible with current players. I'm wondering if they have to have their firmware upgraded or something. Although almost no consumer will ever need these discs it could be a pain to update firmware on some of the older players.
I wonder how many days it'll take to burn a full disc.
about 14 hours.
HOLY CRAP isn't the most we ever had a double layered disk? 50 gigs was still a lot.. wow, that is crazzy XD
Uncompressed 1080P 1Tb 2hr Blu-Ray FTW!!!
>> Also it's too bad that your eyes can't actually see more than 1080p...
LMAO
Seriously.... I have 2 hardrive of 1TB even if its not completly 1TB u got on these crap.. its jsut fake ads.... cause that 400gb disk ssur isn 't a complete 400 cause 1gb is 1012mb but they only calculate 1000mb.... so when they will hit that 1TB in 2013 they wont be at 1tb but only at 988 000MB meaning 988GB so I will not be much surprised to see how compagnies does sell stuff that aren't even true... and see how people would sell them-self buying those stuff that aren't even NEAR what would be written on the disk...
and by self-minding... if u buy a 1tb disk... put 1tb stuff.... drop the disk scratch or brake it... that means u will have spend 300$ on a stupid HUGE disk thats a total waste!!!!!