Turner Testing Holographic Storage

Izmunuti writes "An article in ComputerWorld describes tests by Turner Entertainment of a holographic storage system from InPhase Technologies as a possible replacement for magnetic tape for storing their movies and other programs for playback and broadcast. The article states that each holographic disk holds 300 GBytes." Even more impressive is the cost per terabyte estimated for just a few years down the road.

But is it 'Perpendicular'?

[Burz]

That's all I want to know. :-)

Bring it on

[Kawahee]

I want one. And I want a Cortana floating over it. And I want her defragmenting my data and writing my school reports on the fly.

Re:A few years down the road...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, one day I'll be playing Duke Nukem Forever on a Phantom console, streamed from Holographic storage, and displayed directly on my wall that's papered with Electronic Ink.

Re:8" floppies anyone?

[Cyclotron_Boy]

Does anyone remember the holographic tape from the movie Brainstorm [imdb.com]? I was wondering when something like this would become a reality... Ah the good old days. /reminiscing

Typical executive

[Dekortage]

From the article: "Their production version promises to be much faster than tape, but we've not seen that yet," Tarasoff said.

So we're reading an article about an executive excited about a prototype demo to his bosses involving technology that won't be available for a year or more??? If that's acceptable, then I have a lot of articles to write!

Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope...

[digitaldc]

R2D2 is suing Turner for infringement, he had this technology a long time ago.

Yay!

[manojar]

now I can store all my po rn in a single disk.

How lomg till some corporation vehemently opposes this one?

Re:Yay!

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

That's 1.6 million pictures of breasts. Considering that there are 86400 seconds in a day, you have to see 18.5 pictures/second to see them all each day.
The refresh rate on a monitor these days is 90Hz, so it can display 90 images/second or 7,776,000 images per day. With other words you need 5 of such disks to make full use of you computer and that's even without using dual screen, or higher refresh rates. We still have a long way to go.

Re:Speed, not size

[hoggoth]

> I want a 100GB recordable disc for under $1.

And a pony. I want a pony too.

MPAA to InPhase Technologies

[Easy2RememberNick]

Graphic on InPhase Technologies website: "Imagine Holding 100 movies in the palm of your hand"

  *riiing*
  Secretary: "Hello InPhase Technologies, may I help you?"
  Secretary: "Oh hello Mr. Glickman of the MPAA"
  Secretary: "Our CEO Mr. Diaz is in a meeting at the moment, may I take a message?"
  Secretary: "So the message is 'No...effen...way' ?"

Re:Speed, not size

[Quiet_Desperation]

I ran into the same problem when I started mucking with digital video. I recorded a buddy's wedding, and when I was done with the editing and title animations and iDVD project whatnot, I had an 80 GB folder.

I used "tar" to glom it up and then "split" the file into DVD sized chunks and made two copies of the segments on a small spindle of DVDs with a text file on disc #1 explaining how to reconstruct everything. I couldn't think of anything else to do that didn't involve expensive hardware (tape drive) or fancy backup software. It was tedious, but at least I used free stuff available in the Unix layer under OS X.