Pioneer has developed a 16-layer read-only optical disc which it claims can store 400GB of data. The per-layer capacity is 25GB, the same as that of a Blu-ray Disc, and the multilayer technology will also be applicable to multilayer recordable discs. Multi-layered discs have been difficult to develop because 'crosstalk' from adjacent layers and transmission loss mean that getting a stable signal from the disc is often nearly impossible.
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The first thing I can think of when I see 400GB is that it will be great to store my entire music collection on, or photo collection without having to split it up on to two or three DVDs. But wait a minute - read only? I guess that means games can get bigger, operating systems can get bigger to, but with all this storage, I'd still prefer to write my stuff to a disc thanks.
and porn
I'm just saying I think there are too many unknowns here to call it useless.
Personally, I just hope to see real-world applications ASAP... These announcements don't mean much at all, unfortunately.
Yes, it requires new hardware, but we can extend the same applications and APIs, as well as make use of blu-ray extensions that may not be available on the new format. Backward compatibility will be maintained, which is a bonus compared to an alternative format which may require more complex hardware and software support to maintain backward compatibility with blu-ray and its extensions.
This will make it difficult for Pioneer to break into the market with its format, if someone can already do the same type of thing with Blu-Ray, even possibly matching and exceeding the capacity of Pioneer's format.
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/pi...ray-disc-416837
The only advantage of optical drives is their back-up function, and that is cumbersome and the backups themselves are unreliable. Anything important enough to be backed-up shouldn't rely on errant scratch.
anyway, what's the point of a 16-layer disc - why not have 16 discs with one layer?
I'd hate downloading 400 GB of something.
Or even 25 GB of something despite my 100 Mbps connection (due to e.g. cross-Atlantic transfers becoming "slow" anyway), as is the case with Blu-ray movies of unreduced quality.
I can't imagine how it would feel like for the millions with 24 Mbps-and-less DSL connections.
I agree, physical media is going to be around for a long time. It's always nice to know that even if your computer dies in a fire, you still have a copy of CoD4 sitting in your drawer somewhere.
Edit: Supposed to reply to #6...
It's a multilayer Blu-ray Disc!
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/pi...ray-disc-416837
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