Pioneer Electron Beam DVD

wordboy writes "Pioneer Electronics just announced that they will introduce an electron-beam recorder for next-generation optical data storage. The electron beam is much finer than that of a typical laser so they are able to achieve densities of 50GB or more with a standard 12cm disc. But can it cook my TV dinner, too?"

It still

[The Ancients]

consists of moving parts :(

Is it just me, or is the wait for solid state storage a long one?

..k

A 'Box-Set' indeed!

[Chordonblue]

You realize of course that the type of media involved here would almost certainly need to be incased in some sort of plastic sheath (Like the Blu-Ray HD DVDs). One scratch and you'd be done!

Not as portable, and certainly not as cheap to produce. A format like this would be a godsend for admins who do backups but as a common medium... Well, I imagine it might get as popular as something like Super Audio CD's or CD+G's for music.

In other words, not very much...

Re:Sounds good to me

[great throwdini]

his may be the answer as opposed to other methods of optical storage that have been floating around.

Actually, this announcement directly relates to the manufacture of master discs for such "other" methods (specifically, Blu-ray). This press release is not announcing another new format in the least (for now), just a new tool for use in the mastering process.

If I Want a DVD Recorder...

[MBCook]

So if I want a DVD Recorder, soon my options will be:

• Normal DVD+R(W)
• Normal DVD-R(W)
• Double Layer DVD+R(W)
• Double Layer DVD-R(W)
• Sony's new UMD (seen is PSP)
• Blu-Ray (Sony is pushing this too, possibly the PS3 media of choice)
• This new Electron one
• ...And there is probably at least 1 or 2 others that I can't think of right now.

Makes VHS vs Beta simple, huh? Let's hope most of this gets sorted out before it gets to most consumers.

only for creating masters

[Anonymous Coward]

People seem to be missing the fact that this is a device for creating master discs, rather than an end-user product. The 50GB limit is what can be read by the optical devices the mass-produced copies of this master disc will eventually be played on.

Re:A 'Box-Set' indeed!

[Shoten]

I don't think so; it's no longer a matter of optics, so optical deformities in the surface of the disk would not be an issue. And since I would guess the material that made up the disk itself would need only to be relatively transparent to the electron beam, it could be a lot less scratch-prone than lexan. The bigger problem might be certain kinds of dust, with unpredictable qualities that could affect the path or focus of the beam.

Re:Thing is...

[jmv]

Imagine how much of a problem it will be with subatomic particles.

We're nowhere near subatomic here. In order to fit 50 GB on a disk, the bits will probably be in the hundreds of nanometers large. That's still much larger than atoms.

Largely irrelevant news...

[Insanity]

According to the article, this technology has been developed for creating master discs for the upcoming blue laser optical standards. Currently, this is being done with UV lasers.

This will probably never be used as the basis of a consumer recordable format - we don't even have consumer-level blue laser drives yet. Furthermore, we could realize a significant increase in capacity over blue laser by using UV lasers, which will probably be the trend after blue proves to be too limiting.

This article has practically no applicability to the average slashdot reader - it's not an "electron beam dvd" as the title of the article suggets. Editors should really read the articles they post...

Re:"But can it cook my TV dinner, too?"

[AyeRoxor!]

"Electron beams are what make your TV work. This is pretty amazing if they get this down to consumer price"

Yeah, because TVs aren't in the consumer price-range

Even though your post seems to imply it is I who doesn't understand, I'll forgo the urge to simply say "you're stupid," and try to explain. There is a great deal of difference between scattering a beam across a foot or two of phosphor dots, relatively regardless of where it lands, and actually having to be INCREDIBLY precise at where you hit, AND calculate data from the reflection of the beam. It's the difference between simply shining a flashlight at the night sky, and trying to tell what's in a pitch-black indoor arena using only a pen-laser.

Case or Caddie?

[Neuticle]

Oh for the love of God I hope they put this in a caddie of some sort to protect it. I'm still upset that DVDs are bare media.
CDs get bad enough skipps, DVDs are worse, what's going to happen to this next generation media when it gets scratched? Will a scratch obliterate several hundred megs? At some point error correction just doesn't cut it, a protective caddie is a necessity here.

As for HD-DVD or Blu-ray or this e-beam stuff, if one doesn't use a caddie, don't support it. We shouldn't have our media ruined if they don't get treated perfectly. If I was one for conspiracy theories, I'd think DVD is one to get us to buy the same thing over and over since the discs are so fragile.

Re:One use for 50GB

[Trejkaz]

You can fit something like 12 episodes of a TV series on a single disk already, but that doesn't mean anybody will be nice enough to do it.

Re:It still

[Jerf]

*sigh*... you're missing the point.... the grandparent was referring to *real* solid state storage, not 1-2 gigs.

Drop that "1-2 gigs" of storage back in time to yourself ten years ago and tell me it's not "real storage".

1-2 gigs holds damn near everything of interest to me in my life, including a book-length essay I spent three years on, all the digital photos I have, all the source code I've ever written, the source to all the music I've ever written, every website I've ever done, and all the misc. other data I consider critical, and would still have, well, nearly 1-2 gigs left over since all of the above clocks in at around 300 MB. Any storage that can back up all my critical data is real in my book, even though it holds only a fraction of my MP3 collection... this year.

Re:It still

[Mr. Slippery]

the grandparent was referring to *real* solid state storage, not 1-2 gigs.

Some of us remember a time when "real" storage was 30 megs.

Point being, yesterday's idea of "real" storage is avilable in solid state. By the time today's idea of "real" storage is avilable, today will be yesterday. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Maybe not...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

This technology is still about 10 years out there (at the very least). Electron beams have low tolerance to vibration, and are better for stationary media, at this point. But the same thing was said about laser in the 70's, so likely the media will be over built to support error correction, like laser disks were.

Not necessarily true. Technology in areas of electronic production that limited the development of the laser disk in the 70's has improved, it's just not the same world. Stability should not be as much as a problem. As to price, sure it will be spendy when it first comes out, but more often than not, that has little to do with actual production cost.

Re:A 'Box-Set' indeed!

[Idarubicin]

And since I would guess the material that made up the disk itself would need only to be relatively transparent to the electron beam, it could be a lot less scratch-prone than lexan. The bigger problem might be certain kinds of dust, with unpredictable qualities that could affect the path or focus of the beam.

Actually, the big problem with any sort of electron beam technology outside of a controlled industrial environment is that they scatter readily. In a vacuum you haven't got any problems (over moderate distances) but even introducing air into the system can create significant scatter.

Electrons also suck at pentrating anything more solid than air. Electrons at, say, 10 kV won't penetrate more than a few microns into a layer of plastic; they'll travel an even shorter distance into a metallic surface. They'll be useless for high precision work after travelling several tens of nanometers.

Unfortunately, solid materials relatively transparent to electrons don't exist, and can't be made from regular matter. Electrons are deflected by charge--and matter is made up of charged particles.

This technique is confined to the factory. It is designed for 'pressing' master discs. Until the inside of your computer's case can maintain a vibration free environment (no fan, no other drives), tolerates high magnetic and electric fields for the electron optics (goodbye hard disk) tolerates high voltages, and can supply a good vacuum, and can apply a high quality coating after the disc is 'burned', this isn't going to show up on the desktop.

Re:One use for 50GB

[Babbster]

"Nice enough"? How about "cheap enough"? Stuffing more content onto each DVD means reducing the data rates at which each hour of content is stored - like ripping MP3s (or your audio compressor of choice) at 128 kbps instead of 320. IMHO, they already push the quality envelope with 6-8 (half-hour) episodes of television shows on a DVD, especially if you're talking about live action instead of cartoon. Personally, I'd be much happier if companies would hold themselves to two hours of higher quality video per disc. Getting up to swap discs at that interval shouldn't be that physically demanding.

Re:Predicted in 1945...

[cubic6]

He's talking about using the kind of electron beam used inside a TV to write sales totals on a photograph card. Not really related. I'm not really very impressed with this guy. He predicted a lot of solid ideas, but his implementations were short-sighted. He didn't predict the transistor, so his department-store cash register was based on punch cards and dry photographs.

Re:Thing is...

[Anonymous Coward]

The beam of the laser is much larger than atoms.

Also true for an electron beam. (The beam is larger than an individual electron.)

Photon don't exist without their associated wavelength, hence their duality.

Also true for electrons (see the de Broglie relation). The wavelength of a high-energy electron is much shorter than that of a visible-light laser.