Home Gaming Pioneer announces 400GB optical disc

Pioneer announces 400GB optical disc

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Blu-ray title contender

Pioneer has announced that it has created a Blu-ray type disc that can hold over 400GB, it doesn’t currently plan on releasing it but if it did we would only require a small change to the existing Blu-Ray players to get them to work.

You can check it all out here.

It does raise a big question around the longevity of Blu-Ray or any other optical disc out there at the moment.

The CD wasn’t really challenged for quite some time, then the DVD was the clear leader for years and years. However ever since the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war started there have been other contenders who just don’t look like they are going anywhere.

The problem here is that until there is an industry accepted standard there won’t be mass market take up. Blu-Ray easily has the best shot at becoming the next defacto optical standard but unless they can solidify that in the next year this may end up being a hollow victory.

Last Updated: July 8, 2008

14 Comments

  1. RE: Gamer

    July 8, 2008 at 11:38

    The question is, why should the world have to settle for Blu-Ray? It’s a fleeting technology imo, already surpassed in capacity and offers no other advancement over DVD other than Blu-Ray Live – a function HD DVD was the first to implement and hardly a deal breaker. It should die quickly so they can usher in a new dawn of storage media – discs are dead.

    Reply

  2. Milesh Bhana ZA

    July 8, 2008 at 12:04

    My understanding is that this disc is really a Blue-Ray disc with LOTS of layers. Naturally it won’t work in existing players. But the tech is very similar. (similar blue lazer diode, 25GB per layer etc).

    Milesh Bhana ZA’s last blog post..Call of Duty 2 [XBOX360]

    Reply

  3. kabraal

    July 8, 2008 at 12:15

    *Sigh* First of, that article is sort of unclear. It’s not a new “BD type” media. It’s a BD disc with 16 layers and if you’d want to read such a disc you’ll need a variation on the lens of the laser to pick up the tracks.

    For those of you who don’t understand how any sort of tech industry works, it’s called R&D. Everyone has R&D. Like I said 10 times before, both HD-DVD and BD were in the wonderful world of R&D back in the 90’s. Did it threaten the longevity of DVD? TDK is in the business of physical media R&D and manufacture. There will be variations. They will experiment with multiple layers on a BD. They might even commercialize the technology. It’s what’s they’ve been doing for money for decades.

    “The problem here is that until there is an industry accepted standard there won’t be mass market take up”

    There is one, it’s called BD. Wiki BDA, and it is the next industry accepted optical disc accepted by almost all of the hardware and software manufacturers. Sooner or later, it will be forced down your throat. Deal with it.

    Reply

  4. LazySAGamer

    July 8, 2008 at 12:31

    I just like winding you up about Blu-Ray 😛

    I still don’t expect an optical standard to be the next big thing, I’m putting what little money I have on digital downloads

    Reply

  5. Milesh Bhana ZA

    July 8, 2008 at 12:38

    well naturally R&D tech is years ahead of commercial tech.

    I think the big drive now is sqeezing more layers on the disc. This will save companies millions on distribution costs for multi-disk packages (think TV series)

    Digital downloads are definitely the way to go but Sony and the BDA have ensured that Blue-Ray will be the de facto standard and these things tend to stick around for a good few years.

    May as well make the most of it.

    Milesh Bhana ZA’s last blog post..Call of Duty 2 [XBOX360]

    Reply

  6. kabraal

    July 8, 2008 at 13:01

    I’ve no issue with downloads. Downloads will be successful. It’s successful in the music industry, it’s successful with steam and it’s sort of successful where it’s used for movies in the US. Hell it seems Sony’s DL service via PSN will even be ready before the MS service. They also realize that in the future the largest amount of the revenue pie will lie there, like it is with music atm.

    But one thing an optical format will always have over DL is bandwidth. There will still be a market for physical media for a long long time.

    Reply

  7. Fox1

    July 8, 2008 at 14:38

    Blue-Ray Live is going to be launched locally 🙂
    http://mybroadband.co.za/news/ADSL/4398.html

    Reply

  8. scotty777

    July 8, 2008 at 14:49

    well… I reckon, since this is a gaming site, that these disks will really go up to 100gig’s for consoles. And i think that the next set of consoles will have blu-ray drives, only, lets hope that the console makers will go for gaming and not some other big idea, eg: the ps3 with blu-ray, I mean, why? why didn’t sony just go along and get some awesome hardware and drop blu-ray? sigh, I will never understand these battles

    Reply

  9. Milesh Bhana ZA

    July 8, 2008 at 15:01

    it’s part of a value proposition. Sony were trying to repeat the success of PS2. It’s clear that in the early stages of the PS2’s lifecycle, it succeeded because of the DVD drive. Many households bought PS2 as a “cheap DVD player”. Developers were happy because they had the extra space.

    This upp’d the install base attracting even more developers to the platform.

    They made a loss on the PS2 (initially), and made a killing on the platform overall. There are more PS2s than any other console.

    That’s good business.

    Milesh Bhana ZA’s last blog post..Call of Duty 2 [XBOX360]

    Reply

  10. doobiwan

    July 8, 2008 at 15:27

    What the article points too is that it’s not a case of “BD the movie format” being superseded, those may very well stay for a long a time.

    What it does allude to is that the current generation of BD players may be too early in the long run. But if the movie format stays, maybe not. Time will tell.

    doobiwan’s last blog post..The Games that made the consoles

    Reply

  11. David

    July 8, 2008 at 16:29

    What about the Tera Disc

    Reply

  12. abe

    July 8, 2008 at 16:49

    I dont see pyhsical storage being abandoned anytime soon.
    Companies control the relaese of technology in order to first gain profit. Also even in countries with fast internet, bandwidth costs are still a problem. I dont see DLC becoming the sole format moving forward anytime soon!

    Reply

  13. Milesh Bhana ZA

    July 8, 2008 at 16:53

    I think the difference is that the Tera Disk uses different technology completely. Pioneer are using a Blue-Ray based tech so that future BR players (or modded existing ones) will be able to read these discs too.

    Milesh Bhana ZA’s last blog post..Call of Duty 2 [XBOX360]

    Reply

  14. kabraal

    July 8, 2008 at 21:11

    Difficult to get info about this since everything translated from japanese usually gets lost in translation. TDK claimed existing BD player hard will be able to pick up tracks on the 200GB BD discs. Looks like this could hold true for this disc as well

    “Since the optical specifications of the objective lens, such as NA (Numerical Aperture)*2, are the same as those for the existing BD discs, it is possible to maintain compatibility between the new 16-layer optical disc and the BD discs.”

    http://pioneer.jp/press/release193.html

    Anyhow, I think the yields and costs on these disc stink atm.

    Reply

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