1.6 Terabytes!!!!

[Iason Ouabache]

http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/23/beyond-blu-ray-2000-movies-on-one-disc/

Just as we were all getting used to watching movies on Blu-Ray, Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia has developed a DVD that holds 1.6 terabytes of data — or about 2,000 movies.  There is nothing like having your entire movie collection on one disc.

All this is made possible by adding a fourth and fifth dimension to an optical disc.  By doing this, a range of different colored wavelengths can read the same physical location.  Current DVDs use a red laser, while Blu-Ray DVDs naturally use a blue laser.

Researchers at Swinburne University say that a commercial release is still five years away, even though an exclusive agreement has already been signed with Samsung.

But will the everyday consumer need such a huge optical storage medium? Just think about the potential price of just one disc, let alone the player.  The steeper price of Blu-Ray discs and players have hindered that technology from gaining a large share of the DVD market.

[Arafelis]

Just as we were all getting used to watching movies on Blu-Ray, Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia has developed a DVD that holds 1.6 terabytes of data — or about 2,000 movies.

Sure, now.  But just wait till the guys who add "special features" get wind of this.

[bones]

Moore.. What an asshole!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Hopefully they will put these motherfuckers in a fucking CASE so they don't get all scratched up so easily.

[bones]

Am I the only one actually satisfied with watching medium-quality downloaded films of around 700MB, and listening to 256kbps mp3s? Seems like every motherfucker's gotta have FLAC and BLU-RAY.
Yeah that's right, smart-guy, your Blu-ray films look really sharp, pity you can only afford to own 15 movies. Me? I've got a couple hundred movies on my hard drive, but the quality on them is merely fine. I mean, you can tell you're just watching a picture on a screen, you know?

Broken AI: Don't worry, Internet is speeding up too, remember downloading a bunch of mp3s on Napster used to take just as long? But seriously, how much do you need the title screen and polish subtitles? Just download the 700MB .avi file, much easier!

[Triple Zero]

256kbps is good enough for me as well. From 192kbps and up I cannot tell the difference anyway.

700MB downloaded films are usually good enough. Maybe once I get a really big screen, I want a bit higher quality. Also the audio on the 700mb movies isnt always top-notch.

but i vastly prefer .AVI movies to DVDs anyway, because they do not scratch and bugger up halfway the movie, and rewinding just a few seconds if you didnt catch something is super quick and easy, and you can download subtitles.

I really wish I could rent AVIs at the local videotheque

[Cain]

Am I the only one actually satisfied with watching medium-quality downloaded films of around 700MB, and listening to 256kbps mp3s? Seems like every motherfucker's gotta have FLAC and BLU-RAY.
Yeah that's right, smart-guy, your Blu-ray films look really sharp, pity you can only afford to own 15 movies. Me? I've got a couple hundred movies on my hard drive, but the quality on them is merely fine. I mean, you can tell you're just watching a picture on a screen, you know?

Broken AI: Don't worry, Internet is speeding up too, remember downloading a bunch of mp3s on Napster used to take just as long? But seriously, how much do you need the title screen and polish subtitles? Just download the 700MB .avi file, much easier!

I'm OK with those, personally.  700 MB, avi format films and 256kbps, that is.

That said, my parents do have a HDTV right now, and the clarity on more recent films, such as Iron Man, is very impressive.  I can see why someone would want to test the potential of such a system through ever increasing quality films (whilst also recognizing there is, of course, a lucrative market in such things).

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I don't even bother with MP4, to be quite honest. That said, audio quality and video quality are something that I can perceive, but without a side by side comparison it's pretty meaningless.

[Golden Applesauce]

What, movies?  Why would you put movies on something this big, unless you were just trying to fill in the gaps?

This, sir, is your local library in a handy portable circle.  It's the complete works of your favorite publisher.  It's every peer reviewed paper on the subject of your choice, with commentary.

It's enough random bits to solve all your encryption problems for years at a time.   

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

This isn't your local library, it's the library of congress. Just saying.

[Cait M. R.]

This isn't your local library, it's the library of congress. Just saying.

Only if it's text, not images.

Most digital copies of books are images, not text.

Just saying.

[bones]

I definitely respect that the stupidly rich people buying the top-quality everything for the big bucks are funding the advancing technology so we all benefit from moore's law constantly trickling down. The thing that bugs me is that many of my stupider friends spend ALL their income on Blu-ray films and big HD TVs, then whenever I'm at their places all we do is watch films and I have to listen to them constantly reaffirming to me themselves how "worth it" it is to have "high-end" shit.

"Yeah, dude, you're absolutely right, it IS way better quality. Sure, I've probably got 30 films on my hard drive for each film you own, but the crisp perfection of this Blu-ray sure has me green with envy."

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

This isn't your local library, it's the library of congress. Just saying.

Only if it's text, not images.

Most digital copies of books are images, not text.

Just saying.

Bah. I consider that to be a design error, personally, since searching images is a non-trivial problem, and since you cannot automatically cut up and markovize words from images. A decent trade off would be PDF which has -- get this -- the WORDS as WORDS, and the PICTURES as PICTURES, and will *still* fit the library of congress into 1.6tb (which btw, and maybe I am behind the times, but Should Be Enough For Anyone).

[Cain]

It should be.  I have somewhere in the 4000-5000 book range, almost all PDF (with some .djvu .rtf and .html) on my hard drive and external HD.  Definitely less than 20 gig's worth on the laptop, and you'd be hard pressed to read them all within a year.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I at one point had something like 2 gigs of plaintext (most of it ripped from PDF or html originals). I probably have some of it around. But, I seriously doubt I'd be able to get through all that in a year. Maybe not even a man-year.