What Next-Gen DVD Will Survive the Next Three Years? - Open Standards for the Future
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It might be the fourth point I found interesting about this futuristic media that actually sent Sony to Toshiba’s conference rooms. Again, I will quote from the part of Fujifilm’s press release that covers HVD’s “critical advantages for storing large amounts of data, including:…a system based on open standards that ensures future enhancements and product longevity. Ecma International, the global industry standards organization dedicated to the standardization of information and communication systems, is currently processing four (4) Standards Projects based on Collineartm Technology put forth by the HVD Alliance.”
Take another look at the history of the Betamax. It was a proprietary format. It lost out to a format that was licensed to a number of different manufacturers. How do you suppose a storage media, no matter how well supported in the industry, would fare against another media that can not only store several times as much data, but is based on open standards?
Yes, it is entirely possible that Optware and the HVD Alliance will not come out with a working version of their technology for consumers in time to beat Blu-ray and/or HD-DVD to market. Indeed, some of the most recent "news" about the media is a year old. But it looks like they’re going to try. On Optware’s Frequently Asked Questions page, it states that a sample drive for businesses and professionals “will be released in the beginning of 2005.” Sadly, they seem to have missed that target – the press release from Fujifilm did not mention that the company was taking orders. As to consumers, release of that version of the drive “will be after 2006.”
If you read John Aubrey’s piece about Blu-ray, located at http://www.devhardware.com/c/a/Opinions/BluRay/, you know that the technology is currently available in Japan, but is very expensive. As far as the mass consumer market, we wouldn’t be likely to see it over here until 2006 or 2007. This strikes me as being uncomfortably close (for Sony) to the possible timing of the release of HVD drives.
I’m not sure exactly how versatile these HVDs are, but if they are truly capable of storing the amount of electronic data they describe, I can easily envision a not-too-distant-future in which a person can store all of their music, movies, games, books, and electronic projects on one or at most two discs. With a small portable device that includes a screen, some simple controls, and a portable keyboard – such as a PDA or even an adapted version of Sony’s PlayStation Portable – you could take it all to the beach, on vacation, or wherever you needed to go. If you lose the disc, no big deal; you can keep another disc or two at home with everything, just for backup.
Indeed, if the format is appropriately archival, large libraries such as the Library of Congress might be able to back up all of their data (which these days includes audio and video in addition to traditional text) and store it easily at several locations in a limited amount of physical space. In fact, Wikipedia's entry on the topic of HVDs states that "The books in one of the largest libraries in the world, the US Library of Congress, contain about 20 terabytes of text. Neglecting images, the content could be stored on a little more than 6 of these discs." I can remember science fiction stories in which our heroic travelers from Earth carried “the sum of human knowledge” with them on their spaceships. I wondered how they managed it. Perhaps now we’re beginning to see how that might actually be possible one day.
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