News and Reviews....

    Beyond The Blue Ray Disc  February 2005

    The storage medium for personal home viewing of movies and the like, took a step forward at this years' CES (Consumer Electronic Show) held in Las Vegas this past January. The two competing formats being BLUE RAY and HIGH DEFINITION (DMD) Disc are well on their way to convincing their respective followers of their inherent advantages.  (*See the supplemental materials listed below.) 

    Although the two formats are not yet fully to market, nor has the winner in the two formats emerged, a new contender has, and will be a solid step forward in size of storage. The new contender is a medium that has been known for over 40 years. The Holographic (Light) storage medium. 

    The Blu-ray Disc Association states that its Dual-layer disks can store 50 GBytes or more than 4.5 hours of high-definition audio-video content. By increasing the number of recording layers, the association says its disks will be capable, in the future of storing 100 to 200 Gbytes.

    The DVD Forum has said that the dual-layer HD (DMD) DVD-ROM disks, for which it is currently setting specifications, can store eight hours of high-quality content. Its biggest asset is its compatibility to play existing DVD disks.

    The TC44 committee associated with the single beam Holographic storage system has stated that the Hologram can store 100 Gbytes to several terabytes. The first disks will target archival storage for businesses and professionals and will be released sometime this year. Drives for consumer systems will be released after 2006.

Comment .....  While all of us at Custom Audio-Video Systems feel that nothing stops technology, and that their will always be a better method and equipment for consumers to embrace, we also believe that the current DVD is heavily entrenched. High Definition is well on its way into the Television market. Once it has a good enough foot hold in the Television market, then and only then will the High Definition DVD be relevant. At that point, the consumer will be looking for High Def DVDs and at first will want a playback product which does not make their entire DVD collection part of the trash, and so we believe that the DMD is a fine stepping stone into the HD playback market. For those that have been hold outs to the entire DVD process (I don't think their are many) the Blue-Laser or Holographic Storage machine will be their initial product of choice or possibly a secondary unit for High Def Playback.

For information leading up to this article see:

    Birth of the Blues    February 2002

    DVD - Blue/Out - Red/IN    March 2002

    DVD - New Standard    May 2002

    Next Generation DVD    December 2002

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