Life After Blu-ray
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We all know that HD-DVD has given up the battle for the next generation movie media, and that Blu-ray has been declared the winner. This is all fine and dandy, but that was so last year, and as a tech guru, I want to know what is next. It’s the nature of technology to be in development before the current market adapts to the next high end gear.
Now that we've finished with the HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray battle, it's time to move on to what might replace Blu-ray. We will take a look at what is up next for the video viewing audience. Just as there were multiple formats fighting for the current "next generation" format, there are a few different formats that look poised to become the next favored media format when Blu-Ray kicks the bucket. Some are brand new high technologies that are mind boggling, and some are in use today, but haven't caught on yet.
Holographic Versatile Disc
No, we aren't talking about something out of Star Trek; this is real holography. This new technology could hold up to 3.9 TB per disk. To put that into perspective, you could fit the entire Library of Congress onto six of these disks. At the current video resolution, that is about a year of play back on a single disk. Sounds really interesting, doesn't it? I'm sure we will see the resolution bump up to at least double if not even more.
Traditional film is roughly 3000 to 4000 lines, which compared to the current 1080i is three to four times as big. If you're thinking of audio, this is more than 48 80 GB iPods in one disk. To go from 50 GB on a disc, which is what Blu-ray is capable of, all the way to 3.9 TB requires some technology we have yet to see.
This will work similar to previous generations of optical media. Instead of having a single laser to read the data, with HVD, there is a green laser and a red laser that work together. The red laser is first and is used to help lead the green laser. The interesting aspect is that the disc is designed so that the top layer is read by the green laser, where the data is stored, while the red laser passes through the first layer onto the second later, and both are then reflected back up to the laser reader, which translates the disc into usable data.
Next: HVD continued >>
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