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Data Storage

High Density CDs 370

Posted by michael from the totally-incompatible dept.
goofrider writes "Sanyo introduced a new format called HD-Burn, supported by their new DVD+/-RW chip. It allows the drive to burn up 1.4GB of data using a regular 700MB blank CD-R blank. The resulting HD-Burned CD-R can only be read by supporting DVD/DVD-ROM drives and CD-ROM drives. Most DVD/DVD-ROM drives can support the format via a firmware upgrade. It's unclear how easy and how likely will it be for future drives to support this format. In contrast, Plextor released their new GigaRec technology in their new PlexWriter Premium (read a review here). GigaRec also records on regular blank CD-Rs, allows up to 1GB of data on a 700MB disc. however, the disc can be read on any modern good-quality CD-ROM drives with no firmware upgrades required. So now I can record 2x the data on a CD-R but I still can't have filenames longer than 64 characters. :)"
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High Density CDs

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  • Double density floppy anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Been there, done that. They're just buying time until DVD media takes over (which it is already beginning to).

    • Re:Double density floppy anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chamenos ( 541447 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:19AM (#5852699)
      not necessarily...at the moment few people i know use DVD media for back-up storage, since the cost is prohibitive. secondly the average user does not need any more space per CD than what is currently available, because for the average user the largest single file they'll burn on a CD is usually a divx movie, and that doesn't usually exceed 800 megabytes. if an entire back-up of a hard drive is what's needed, most would simply use a few cheap CDs as opposed to a single expensive DVD blank.

      another pitfall of using DVD media is the different standards available from different manufacturers, unlike blank CDs and 1.44mb floopies. this is one of the reasons why people still use 1.44mb floppies today.

      with this new improvement in the data density of a CD, DVD media might be set to go the way of the MD. it could have been something good, but was never became something more than a novelty due to corporate greed.

      • secondly the average user does not need any more space per CD than what is currently available, because for the average user the largest single file they'll burn on a CD is usually a divx movie, and that doesn't usually exceed 800 megabytes. if an entire back-up of a hard drive is what's needed, most would simply use a few cheap CDs as opposed to a single expensive DVD blank.

        Eventually, if the new technology is cost affordable enough, the savings on number of CD's needed might be worth it.

        Two years ag

      • Re:Double density floppy anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:53AM (#5852980) Journal
        "at the moment few people i know use DVD media for back-up storage, since the cost is prohibitive."

        Prohibitive? $/MB cost is more or less comparable to CD, I'd think.

        "with this new improvement in the data density of a CD, DVD media might be set to go the way of the MD. it could have been something good, but was never became something more than a novelty due to corporate greed."

        MD is *big* in Japan (no pun intended). In fact I'm a bit surprised that it never caught on here, perhaps it's due to the few problems they had at first. MD was (and still is) perfect for portable audio, offering long play times and low power comsumption in a small and convenient form factor, long before MP3 players became commonplace. I have a portable MD player that I'm very happy with.

        I think DVD's will be replaced with improved technology such a blue-laser optical storage, not with a technology that'll let you squeeze a bit of extra data on existing CDs.
        • What about Blu-ray [blu-raydisc.info]?
          This from the Blu-ray Disc License Site:

          Nine leading companies have jointly established the basic specifications for a next generation large capacity optical disc video recording format called "Blu-ray Disc". The Blu-ray Disc enables the recording, rewriting and play back of up to 27 gigabytes (GB) of data on a single sided single layer 12cm CD/DVD size disc using a 405nm blue-violet laser.

          "Blu-ray Disc" Key Characteristics

          1) Large recording capacity up to 27GB (single sided single l

      • Re:Double density floppy anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by David Jao ( 2759 ) * <djao@dominia.org> on Thursday May 01, 2003 @12:14PM (#5853185) Homepage
        at the moment few people i know use DVD media for back-up storage, since the cost is prohibitive.

        I don't know where you're getting your numbers from. On pricewatch [pricewatch.com] I find prices to be the following:

        1. DVD-R: $76 for one hundred 4.7GB discs, or 16 cents per gigabyte
        2. CD-R: $17 for one hundred 700MB discs, or 23 cents per gigabyte
        So, media-wise, DVD-R is actually cheaper than CD-R.

        for the average user the largest single file they'll burn on a CD is usually a divx movie, and that doesn't usually exceed 800 megabytes.

        You've got the relationship backwards. Divx filesizes are being held back to under 800 megabytes by the constraints in CD capacity. I no longer limit myself to 800 MB divx files now that I have a DVD burner.

        Just because current CD burners limit you to 800 MB doesn't mean you should be so short sighted as to assume that the 800 MB limit is actually desirable.

        another pitfall of using DVD media is the different standards available from different manufacturers, unlike blank CDs

        You are correct that the DVD standards war is very damaging to DVD. But then in the next paragraph you advocate using nonstandard double data density CDs!

        If you're gonna troll, at least try to keep your position consistent.

  • When do we start punching holes in them? (Score:5, Funny)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) * on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:06AM (#5852572) Homepage Journal
    So, history repeats itself again - higher density on older media.

    When do we start punching holes in them and flipping them over?
    • I remember punching holes in floppys with my Dad. Man, those were the days...

    • Floptical disks [brighton.ac.uk] were floppies that used an optical tracking mechanism to align the magnetic head with the floppy tracks to achieve increased track density.

      A trick which, of course, wouldn't help with optical media to begin with, although didn't Bernoulli drives use magnetism to increase the CDROM track density?).
      • Remember them? I have some!

        The fundimental problem with the floptical IMHO was that the interface was SCSI only. While that was fine by me (At the time I was running an Atari ST so SCSI was my native tongue) it meant the PC crowd (i.e. the bulk of the world) could not easily use them.

        Had Insite made a floptical with a floppy interface (and special drivers to access the higher density mode) they might have been able to displace the floppy disk drives, and get enough volume to have brought the price down.

        I

      • Re:remember flopticals? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Lumpy ( 12016 )
        no bernulli drives were floppy media that used the bernoulli effect to fly the head off the media in order to increase density.

        Got one at home and about 30 disks..

    • OT, may the mods have mercy on my karma (Score:4, Informative)

      by operagost ( 62405 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:39AM (#5852863) Homepage Journal
      Let's not confuse punching a new write-protect hole on a 5 1/4" double-sided floppy with punching the HD hole on a double-density 3 1/2" floppy. The former was perfectly acceptable, as most Commodore and Apple II floppy drives were only single sided and the only way to write on the other side was to flip the diskette. However, most diskette manufacturers didn't bother to put a write-protect hole on that side, so you had to punch your own. I remember using legit educational software that was double-sized and required flipping on the Apple II.

      Now, punching the high-density hole on a DD floppy- that was risky. Sometimes the manufacturer's DD media was good enough to hold HD tracks, but often not. Usually you found out a few months down the line when your "HD on the cheap" floppies started having data errors.

      • Re:OT, may the mods have mercy on my karma (Score:5, Informative)

        by evilpenguin ( 18720 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @12:45PM (#5853466)
        Okay, let me really show my age. I used to punch extra index holes in my SSSD 8-inch floppy disks! Really. I'm not just doing one of those "I had to walk uphill to school both ways" things. The single sided drives had the index hole off to the side, so when you flipped the disk over, the hole didn't line up with the sensor, so you had to punch a second index hole.

        Fun.

        8-inch disks. CP/M. Punch-tape! Those were the days!

        pip a:=b:*.com

        Ahhh!!
  • You just have to create your own CD filesystem, and cope with the fact that it's incompatible with all other CDs in the world

  • I still can't have filenames longer than 64 charac (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:08AM (#5852588)
    That's okay. Here on Slashdot, you can't have subjects longer than 50 characters (as you can see above).

  • Nice idea, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Paddyish ( 612430 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:08AM (#5852592)
    This will probably flop, unless it becomes an integrated standard in all DVD +/- RW drives. No one wants to buy a special cdrom drive just to read high-density CDs, especially when better (read: DVD) technology exists.

    • Re:Nice idea, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by swb ( 14022 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:15AM (#5852664)
      What I want to know is, why waste time and energy developing an incompatible extension to a medium that essentially run its course? I'm not interested in buying any more CD-R drives, at any price. I'm interested in DVD writers, which are where CD-Rs were 2 years ago in price.

      Why not put that effort into DVD media, which still has really low penetration, where the ideas and extensions might catch on enough to make it actually supported in future rollouts? I've found 4.7 GB a useful storage amount and would be think an extension to 9.4 GB would be useful as well.

    • Re:Nice idea, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by shaka999 ( 335100 )
      This is will be great for backups...

      Last time I looked DVD +/-RW media is still expensive. Shopping around I can find CDRs for free after rebate. Using a drive like this would reduce by half the number of CDs I need to backup my data. Sounds like a win to me.

      Once media prices drop for DRV +/- RW this won't be an issue.

      • This is will be great for backups...

        You really think so? In my experience with the floppy hole punching trick, it worked great, but the resulting floppies tended to be less reliable due to bing pushed a little beyond their rated capacity. I would not mind betting that the resulting CDs would not only be more prone to read errors, but should your proprietary (read 'more expensive and harder to obtain') high density drive fail, you would not be able to just plug in any available drive to retrieve your back

    • Re:Nice idea, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )
      There is a market, and it is those persons who are about to upgrade from an old CDR[W] drive to a newer one, who are not upgrading to a DVD burner because of price, and who would like to fit longer DivX movies on a single inexpensive CD :)

      It would also be useful between two people who each had a burner and a drive which would read the discs beside the burner, and who snailmailed CDs to one another. You could send, for example, a set of RAR files plus parity files (smartpar/mirror... what are those files a

  • Sony already did this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:10AM (#5852616) Journal
    Well, sortof, with their DD-CDR or whatever, using new tech to get 1.2 gig per disc.

    If the two formats were compatible, it might almost be useful. Of course that's doubtful. So I cant really see the usefulness of this.

    I thought maybe for archiving or something, but then the cost of the Sony drive is comparable to a DVD-R, so why would I want 1.2 gigs instead of 4.5?

    These little fart in a jar techs will no doubt go the way of the zip drive. A day late and a dollar short - unless the industry works together for a standard thats cross compatible, and makes it ubiquitous.

    Fuck it, I'll just burn two cds.

    • Re:Sony already did this (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pmz ( 462998 )
      These little fart in a jar techs will no doubt go the way of the zip drive.

      Yeah, I bought a 250MB Zip drive right before the CD-R boom. That was a regrettable purchase, when everyone else was burning twice the capacity for a fraction of the cost. I can't imagine that those newer 750MB Zip drives are even selling the first production run.

  • rockridge (Score:5, Informative)

    by Cyn ( 50070 ) <cyn.cyn@org> on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:10AM (#5852618) Homepage
    yeah if you keep burning it joliet you don't - feel free to burn in a different format and you can have the longer names.

  • how about this... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    we stop worrying about sticking more data on CDRs and DVDs and start creating INEXPENSIVE (free) software for DVD authoring?

    When I say "DVD Authoring" I mean a FULL feautured suite including menu creation and beautiful buttons, etc.

    Joe Blow (and for DVD burning this includes me) wants to buy a DVD burner, take it home, and put his movies onto a DVD with a purty menu. He doesn't want to pay $330 for a nice DVD+-R/RW drive, take it home, and find out that the ULead Demo software does NOT work. He then doe
    • Or he could just get one of these [apple.com]. $1299 for great software [apple.com], burner, whizzy new OS, computer.
    • we stop worrying about sticking more data on CDRs and DVDs and start creating INEXPENSIVE (free) software for DVD authoring?

      Get yourself a Mac my friend and your problems would be solved. Yeah yeah, Macs are expensive, yadda yadda. But this is a perfect example of the "expense" of a computer goes far beyond it's original sticker price. While Joe Blow is fretting about spending all that extra money to get the burner and software and fretting with getting everything to be happy, Joe Mac is happily burni
  • I think that this would be an exceptional alternative to using 2 CD game sets, or switching to DVDs.

  • DVD Firmware upgrade? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by epsalon ( 518482 ) <slash@alon.wox.org> on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:13AM (#5852639) Homepage Journal
    Sounds fishy to me. "To read these new DVDs you must upgrade the firmware on your DVD. Oh, by the way, the region coding firmware will be installed too. Happy reflashing!"
    • PC DVD drives are usually region-coded by default.

    • Re:DVD Firmware upgrade? (Score:3, Informative)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )
      You don't need to play with firmware to be able to ignore regions. Just use a DVD player that forgets to ask the drive for the keys, and instead guesses them itself. All Linux players are like that, and I would presume you can find some for Windows too. A DVD drive will let you read the files off any region discs, but they will only give you the keys to decrypt one region.

  • 700 -1000 -1400 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rwiedower ( 572254 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:13AM (#5852645) Homepage
    I'm a little unclear as to who the target audience for this is. I can't remember any time I've sat down and thought "Damn, if only I had 300 more megabytes of space I could cram all my pr0n into ten cds instead of fifteen". Add in the firmware bit and you're targeting a non-existent audience.

    • Re:700 -1000 -1400 (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jhoger ( 519683 )
      2 CD's is just about the amount of space you need to hold a good quality conversion of a DVD to DIVX format.

      And since CD's are so much cheaper than recordable DVD's, it seems like a good way to back up a DVD collection cheaply.
      • Right. So the target audience is people who are backing up/copying their dvd collection. This can't be a huge group...right?

        • Re:700 -1000 -1400 (Score:3, Insightful)

          by rthille ( 8526 )
          Well, my wife has a ton (~200) VHS tapes that I'd love to put on VCD just so they'd take up less space, physically, but they won't fit on 1 VCD and she doesn't like the 'think of it as an intermission' answer...
    • I can't remember any time I've sat down and thought "Damn, if only I had 300 more megabytes of space I could cram all my pr0n into ten cds instead of fifteen"

      Looks back at 3 foot tall stack 'o' spindles full of fansubbed anime

      Raises Hand.

    • Day late and a dollar short, but this could perfectly replace the Dreamcast's GD-ROM which holds zactly 1GB. I'm sure the pirates (excuse me, back-up artisans) are jumping for joy. ;-)

  • Rebirth of the GD-ROM? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by linux11 ( 449315 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:16AM (#5852677)
    The Plextor GigaRec sounds similar to the tweek that Sega did to the DreamCast CD-ROM drives to read GD-ROM disks. I was wondering how long it would take for such a tweek to become mainstream.
    • Apparently (and I know almost nothing about CD-ROM formats, so I'm sure to be corrected in the following 10 posts), Sega accomplished this by basically removing some (all?) of the error correction that a normal CD-ROM has on it. Yes, there's that much.

      Now, for a pressed CD-ROM, I don't mind as much, but considering how flaky most CD-R discs are (dye stabilization, anyone?), I'm not too keen on having less error correction than there is already.
      • ~~~
        Apparently (and I know almost nothing about CD-ROM formats, so I'm sure to be corrected in the following 10 posts), Sega accomplished this by basically removing some (all?) of the error correction that a normal CD-ROM has on it. Yes, there's that much.
        ~~~

        Here is that correction you predicted :)

        Actually it has nothing to do with error correction (There isnt that much, and even so, a GD-rom has the same error correction used on CDs and DVDs depending which part of the disc you are referring to)

        The GD-

  • Get a Mac (Score:4, Funny)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:16AM (#5852678) Homepage Journal
    So now I can record 2x the data on a CD-R but I still can't have filenames longer than 64 characters. :)

    Why not? Don't you have a Macintosh? :-)

    • Re:Get a Mac (Score:3, Informative)

      by Chocolate Teapot ( 639869 )
      Except that your DVD drive in your Mac will be region coded - yes, even in the G4 notebooks!. Actually you are allowed to set the region code 5 times, which is pretty useless if you frequently travel an legitimately own DVDs from multiple regions.

      I live in Canada and one day discovered that my wife had been playing both region 0 and region 1 DVDs in her TiBook. One day, she asked me why her laptop was now locked into region 1. Solution? As the machine was still under warrantee, I called Apple and insisted t

      • I live in Canada
        What I meant to say is that I am an Englishman living in Canada - hence the 'legitimate' need to play DVDs from multiple regions.
        • What I meant to say is that I am an Englishman living in Canada - hence the 'legitimate' need to play DVDs from multiple regions

          As if there even is a 'non-legitimate' need!

          • As if there even is a 'non-legitimate' need!

            Well, actually there is. You forget why region codes were introduced in the first place. It is not uncommon for movies to be released anything up to six months earlier in the US and Canada than in Europe (for whatever reasons known only to the movie industry, but hey, it's their product they can sell it when and where they like). This can lead to a situation where a movie is available stateside on DVD before it has even been shown in Europe. Without region code

            • Re:Correction (Score:5, Insightful)

              by schon ( 31600 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @12:19PM (#5853218)
              You forget why region codes were introduced in the first place

              No, you just haven't realized that it's an excuse, not a reason.

              There's no reason movie studios can't release movies simultaneously in all regions.

              This can lead to a situation where a movie is available stateside on DVD before it has even been shown in Europe.

              If international distribution is really the reason region codes exist, why are movies like Jaws [imdb.com] (1975), Gone With the Wind [imdb.com] (1939), or The Maltese Falcon [imdb.com] (1941) region-coded? Are you suggesting that these movies have yet to be released in Europe?

              I can imagine lines of people, somewhere in $EUROPEAN_CITY, desparately waiting in line to see Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen [imdb.com], 35 years after it was released in the US.

              Region Coding is simply a way for movie studios to create artifical boundaries, to practice predatory pricing.

            • Re:Correction (Score:3, Insightful)

              by valkraider ( 611225 )
              Actually, there is NOT. Even if the studios didn't release the movie simultaneously in all regions - I own the player, I should be allowed to pay extra and import any film I want and watch it on the player.

              If I am willing to go the extra distance to import, I should be allowed to play it. Plain and simple. Or, as others have stated, they could just release worldwide with the same or comperable features... Or would that make sense?

      • Re:Get a Mac (Score:3, Informative)

        by MikeVx ( 627293 )

        I live in Canada and one day discovered that my wife had been playing both region 0 and region 1 DVDs in her TiBook. One day, she asked me why her laptop was now locked into region 1.

        I'm confused. Region 0 is a misnomer of sorts, it essentially means all-region. It should not be necessary to re-set your drive to read a "Region 0" disc. Now if you are switching from region 1 to 2 and back, then you have a problem. If the software is switching around from 1 and 0, the author should be lashed with a we

    • Re:Get a Mac (Score:2, Funny)

      by daves ( 23318 )
      So now I can record 2x the data on a CD-R but I still can't have filenames longer than 64 characters. :)

      - Why not? Don't you have a Macintosh? :-)

      Remember that you can put some of the information inside the file.

  • Old idea, why is this better? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by subreality ( 157447 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:18AM (#5852688)
    Sony tried this [sony.net] nearly three years ago.

    The trouble is that since it's not a ubiquitous standard, it's not really all that useful. Compare to old optical media standards - there were plenty of optical medias that you could record to (and even re-record) long before CDR came out. But CDR took off like all crazy because it was standard media you could play back anywhere.

  • Bah, I developed this myself.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mblase ( 200735 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:18AM (#5852690)
    It allows the drive to burn up 1.4GB of data using a regular 700MB blank CD-R blank.

    I rewrote my drivers some time ago to provide exactly this level of performance, through the simple but clever technique of only writing 1's to the CD and skipping all the 0's, which the CD drive never reads anyhow.

    Well, okay, I rewrote the "write" portion of the code. The "read" portion is still giving me trouble, but I'm confident it's just a matter of time.

  • filename size.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by nolife ( 233813 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:18AM (#5852693) Homepage Journal
    but I still can't have filenames longer than 64 characters. :)

    Use different software. DiscJuggler [padus.com] on W32 for example will allow you to override the normal file system limits to your desire. The resulting disc may not be compatible will all OS's but it will allow you to do it. Another solution is to pack up the files into an archive (gz, bz, zip, rar etc..) and just burn the packed file. Although the files are not directly accessible from the cd, it will maintain the names once extracted. The ability to maintain the filenames is sometimes more important then convenience.

  • 64 (Score:4, Funny)

    by Duncan3 ( 10537 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:19AM (#5852698) Homepage

    ThisIsA64CharacterFilenameBoyIsItLongImSureDespera teToUse65.txt

    Yea, i'm worried :)

  • Ah, excellent! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Blondie-Wan ( 559212 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:19AM (#5852700) Homepage
    Our top scientists are working overtime to outpace the expansion of bloatware. This bold advance should help defer the need to ship everything on multiple CDs for at least another six months! :)

  • DVD-R (Score:3, Interesting)

    by blackmonday ( 607916 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:19AM (#5852703) Homepage
    With the steady decline in DVD-R prices, expect this to be a novelty, especially the version that needs a firmware upgrade for the drives. We'll be buying bulk packs of DVD-R's for $12 bucks very soon.

    What's the read / write speed? I confess I didn't RTFA.

    • funny I just went to WorstBuy last week and bought a pack of DVD+RWs for $9.99. Looks like the time is now...

  • Jeez (Score:5, Funny)

    by Beatbyte ( 163694 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:19AM (#5852704) Homepage
    but I still can't have filenames longer than 64 characters...

    Yes its such a bitch to pay 20 cents for a CD-R and not be able to name your backups 'thursdayaprilthirtyfirsttwothousandthreeelevenfif teenandthirteenseconds.tar.gz'
    'thursdayaprilthir tyfirsttwothousandthreeelevenfif teenandfourteenseconds.tar.gz'
    • I think the worst part about that is finding out that april has thirty one days, here I was thinking that it was april already

    • IE Favorites (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Enonu ( 129798 )
      My favorites collection is something that I backup along with my normal data. It's quite easy to go > 64 characters with the ways some web pages title themselves. The easy solution of course is to just zip 'em up in a file, or export to bookmark.htm, but it's still one more step that I have to do becuase of some arbitrary 64 character filename limit.

  • 64 Characters !?! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:20AM (#5852710)
    64 characters eh? Back in my day we only had eight. And we didn't have any of your fancy pants lower case letters to fool around with either....Bah!

  • yay (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rabtech ( 223758 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:23AM (#5852739) Homepage
    Another hack that is too little too late. I already have my DVD burner, and it already burns 4.7 GB discs.

    No thanks!

  • 64 character limit... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by gpinzone ( 531794 )
    Speacking of which, are there any cd burning programs that allow you to burn a CD with RockRidge and Joliet extensions on Windows? The closest thing I've found is a Java program called CD Everywhere. I've found the ISOs it creates don't always burn right using Nero. Anyone have another suggestion?

  • Dreamcast (Score:2, Informative)

    by bananaape ( 542919 )
    Didn't Sega Dreamcast have a double density CD? Were the tracks closer together or the data bits on the track?
  • Yet another proprietary method of storing more information than was originally intended on a media (format? type?) that continues its inexorable descent into obsolesence.

    Start pushing that Blu-ray DVD technology, people. At 4.7Gb, even standard DVDs are starting to look at little bit tired; with any luck, Blu-ray will become affordable around the time DVDs really start to seem limited, where storage capacity is concerned.

  • Impact on console gaming (Score:5, Insightful)

    by argmanah ( 616458 ) <argmanah AT yahoo DOT com> on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:33AM (#5852816)
    I remember systems such as the Dreamcast had their discs designed to hold more than 700MB specifically so people pirating them couldn't do a perfect job, requiring audio tracks and cutscenes to be surgically removed from the game to fit on a normal CD. I know some PS2 games are just out of reach for CD pirates due to their > 700MB size as well. It seems to me it's quite possible for a soldering iron based firmware upgrade to put those games within reach for pirates now.

    Pirates are always the early adopters of these kind of technologies :).

  • Special drives / software for the Mac ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by adzoox ( 615327 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:39AM (#5852868) Journal
    Personally, I'm going to miss Yamaha now that they've gone bye bye [mail-archive.com] with their Disc@2 labelling laser drives. has anyone heard if they plan to license or sell that technology?

    Eventhough a novelty, it did allow me to personalize CDRs like business cards.

    The new Plextor mentioned in the article sounds interesting. I wonder if I can access that feature on a Mac?

    I know there's this program for OS X to overburn Firestarter [projectomega.org] - I use it often.

    Hopefully, Roxio will make it availible in the next version of Toast.

    As a note, firmware on optical drives, especially DVDs is risky due to region coding. If the firmware goes slightly wrong your region could get messed up. I know on the Mac you just reset open firmware and that usually takes care of that.

  • Not going to happen (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ThomasFlip ( 669988 )
    It seems as though a new data recording standard comes out every week. Until all major computer and hardware manufacturers agree on a single new standard, all of these new data recording technologies are just going to be niche products like the Iomega zip drive.

  • Another dead idea before it hits market (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dsmoses ( 653429 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @11:48AM (#5852939)
    Sanyo's technology shouldn't stand a chance in surviving, much like Iomega's 250MB disks/drives. I would bet that most people (excluding techno-elitist) who are still using Zip drives regardless of their drive capacity, use only 100MB disks, since sharing them utilizes the much wider installed base of 100MB drives. Since CDR and CDRW has replace much of Iomega's usefulness, 250MB drives are pretty useless, especially in a cost/size comparison.

    Likewise, why would anyone bother to use a technology with a very limited install base to double the capacity of a CD when DVD's are getting cheaper, hold even more data, and the installed base is much more prevalent.

    However, plextor's solution should be more ideal despite the smaller 'overburn' rate. Since people can use it right away on the existing install base without worrying too much about compatibility when they go to share their media.
    • Most publishing houses and the like have 250MB zip drives for the simple reason that commercial artists just go ahead and spend the money on shiny new toys. I mean they're very serious about it most of the time, they stick to their "I need this for work" story... But I've seen a bunch of mac users who have owned like, syquest and bernoulli at the same time. That was back in the day, but you get the idea. So anyway, the publishing houses would have 44/88mb syquest way into the modern age of the zip and sq135

  • This has a use (Score:2, Interesting)

    by justinstreufert ( 459931 )
    Everyone is going on about interoperability. Of course it's not compatible, these companies are just "making stuff up."

    But there is a use - what about backups and other offline storage that are generally not shared, or shared only with coworkers? This could save lots of money on media among such users.

    Don't knock it! As long as it doesn't cause rampant data corruption, that is..
    Justin

  • 64 characters? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 42forty-two42 ( 532340 ) <bdonlan.gmail@com> on Thursday May 01, 2003 @12:31PM (#5853320) Homepage Journal
    Are there technical reasons to use ISO9660? Does it have some special error correction, or could I just burn ext2 or something?

    • Re:64 characters? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Ziviyr ( 95582 )
      Yes, seek time. the file system is laid out to avoid needing to leap around the disc a whole lot.

      Though you could burn ext2, just don't cry when Windoshes fail to read them.

  • Explanation on compatibility (pit length) (Score:4, Informative)

    by MeerCat ( 5914 ) on Thursday May 01, 2003 @12:41PM (#5853422) Homepage
    This lifted from a post by "CD Freaks on 13 March 2003" on this page [cdfreaks.com]


    HD-Burn will just *halve* the pit length on the CD, so double the data (and effectively half the error correction).

    However, plextor will only reduce the pit length by 40%, and assuming the drive produces no jitter, then this means the resulting CD will still be readable by normal CD drives, as the red book standard allows for 40% jitter in either direction, so think of it as like Yamaha's Audio Master, but in reverse


    Sounds like it'll work, but make a more disk...

    --
    T

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