Sony's Blue-Violet Laser the Future Blu-ray?

JoshuaInNippon writes "Japanese researchers from Sony and Tohoku University announced the development of a 'blue-violet ultrafast pulsed semiconductor laser,' which Sony is aiming to use for optical disks. The new technology, with 'a laser wavelength of 405 nanometers in the blue-violet region' and a power out put 'more than a hundred times the world's highest output value for conventional blue-violet pulse semiconductor lasers,' is believed to be capable of holding more than 20 times the information of current Blu-ray technology, while retaining a practical size. Japanese news reports have speculated that one blue-violet disk could be capable of holding more than 50 high-quality movie titles, easily fitting entire seasons of popular TV shows like 24. When the technology may hit markets was not indicated."

Oh no.

[bit9]

Here come some more shark comments. Sheesh!

Yet Another Format War on the Way...

[Jerrry]

Of course, as soon as Sony brings this to market, some other company, or group of companies, will unveil a competing product incompatible with Sony's, starting yet another format war. Too bad these guys can't just work together and agree on a common format and save us all time, money, and having to deal with dead formats (e.g. HD-DVD).

By the time they've made this into a real product

[francium de neobie]

We'd already be walking around with 500GB USB sticks.

Or worse, we'd be walking around with 1Gbps wireless connections and we'd be streaming HD movies from YouTube.

So unless they've figured out how to cram like 1PB or even 1EB on an optical disc, they're walking down a blind alley.

Re:Another new format?

[cybereal]

History is easy to forget. DVD was around on the shelves for almost a decade before it hit mass consumption levels. Blu-ray will probably see the same time frames, and this update to the format will take years of research and development before it's even commercially viable.

Don't sweat it.

Re:By the time they've made this into a real produ

[sexconker]

We'd already be walking around with 500GB USB sticks.

Or worse, we'd be walking around with 1Gbps wireless connections and we'd be streaming HD movies from YouTube.

And the "HD" YouTube videos would still look like shit.

Re:Another new format?

[grommit]

Yes, they are trying to kill off blu-ray, 5-10 years from now. I know it can be hard to read them but the summary states that they have announced the development of the laser diode. They haven't released a product, they haven't come up with specs, they haven't even created a single diode yet. This product is years and years off. Stop whining.

Re:Another new format?

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

The difference in going from VHS to DVD was far more substantial than going from DVD to Blu-Ray. No more rewinding, easy seeking, a menu system. Blu-Ray does have a higher quality, but doesn't provide enough new features to warrant upgrading my entire DVD collection...especially when a decent upconverter can be purchased for relatively cheap. Some titles I have purchased for Blu-Ray, Casino Royale, and Dark Knight look gorgeous in high definition. Duck Soup and Spaceballs, however will likely stay in my collection as DVDs.

Re:God darnit disk, DIE ALREADY.

[Grishnakh]

There's nothing wrong with physical discs, only that they're being overtaken by thumb-size USB flash drives for data storage, and are no longer an economical method of mass data storage. It's cheaper to buy whole hard drives and use those for archives than to use optical discs now.

If they'd get off their asses and make optical discs that can store 1 or even 10 TB, and make them cheap, then optical discs would be relevant again. Until then, forget it.

Re:Oh no.

[Twinbee]

They were already there, hence it's automatically on topic. It's almost like saying "Sigh, here comes another Slashdot story..." which will inevitably relate to the much more important topic surrounding shark mounted lasers.

Hence, I'm happier with this Slashdot story because it's actually *more* on topic than usual.

That's nice...but how much will it cost?

[lxnyce]

Just like current blu-ray, it's just not practical. Why would I pay $25 for 4 25GB discs, when I can pay $100 for a 2TB external hard drive? Even for archiving purposes, it's just not practical unless you use the argument that the discs last longer.

Re:

[Peach Rings]

If your storage medium has to explicitly allow your content then someone is doing it terribly, terribly wrong.

Re:um

[Kjella]

We are, at least this media. It'll be as popular as SACD and DVD Audio, which is to say not at all. Ever notice how they could sell DVDs with about 1000 of those iTunes tracks, but they don't? This won't be used to sell more on one disc, it'll be to tell you that you need BeyondHD resolution and lossless 384KHz/48 bit audio for your bats because otherwise you'll miss the overtones. Looking at the encodes I see that even BluRay is often overkill. Outside of backwater countries like the US the connection speeds are ready too. It just doesn't seem like the TV and movie industry is ready, but well... it seems more and more people understand that it's possible anyway.

Re:Sorry, I'm not buying the capacity claims.

[f8l_0e]

It might have to do with the fact that optical discs the pits and lands don't exactly correspond to binary 1's and 0's.

CDs use EFM Encoding [wikipedia.org] to store their data, DVD's use EFMPlus and BD's use 17PP [cdrinfo.com].

Having a faster switching laser may allow for the run lengths to be different. But that's just my best guess.

Re:um

[sznupi]

And suddenly people here want to practically completelly give up their control over media? How did that happen?

Re:

[Nerdfest]

Paying video stores to only carry your format is not really letting the market decide. The whole things was a weasel-fest, and the more expensive format, with a non-finalized spec and forced DRM (or so I'm let to believe) won. I'm still dreaming the day consumers get together and start asking "in that an open, non-patent encumbered format", and not using it if the answer is "no". In my defence, I do realise it is dreaming.

Re:Yet Another Format War on the Way...

[Tordre]

He never said the Sony Spec was to be the one to rule them all, but rather he suggested they all work together to make the next spec to avoid a format war.

I would like to append something to that request, set all the features in stone, so consumers wont have to worry about firmware upgrades or hardware upgrades every time someone says hey wouldn't it be cool if... and then puts it into production. Sure the PS3 can keep up with the evolving blu-ray specs but not every device can.

LOTR

[l0ungeb0y]

These can hold 20x the capacity, but you'll still have to buy the theatrical and extended special editions of LOTR separately
So really, Hollywood execs will render these discs moot, at lest as far as home entertainment purposes go.

Re:um

[Haeleth]

Yeah, this is exactly the route we want to go down. I, for one, can't wait for the day when there is no longer any way to watch a movie without twenty minutes of advertising in every hour.

Re:Great, more room for crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people prefer their movies and TV shows without horrendous compression artifacting.

Re:By the time they've made this into a real produ

[hitmark]

one benefit tho is that a fried drive do not lead to lost data.

Re:

[bloodhawk]

HD-DVD had a massive lead over blu-ray. It took a good 18 months of sales post HD-DVD death for blu-ray to even catch up to be on equal footing. The market had nothing to do with the decision, if it was left up to the market it was far more likely blu-ray would have died, it was Sony's cheque book that finally won the war, they paid off the other studios and the consumer in general are worse off for it.