Sanyo Invents 12X High-Speed Blu-ray Laser

Lucas123 writes "Today Sanyo said it has created a new blue laser diode with the ability to transfer data up to 12 times as fast as previous technologies. The laser, which emits a 450 milliwatt beam — about double that of previous Blu-ray Disc systems — can read and write data on discs with up to four data layers, affording Blu-ray players the ability to store 100GB on a disc, or 8 hours of high-definition video."

Re:I don't get it

[MightyYar]

It's still the cheapest way to distribute data. CDs/DVDs are produced for a few pennies - and even Blu-Ray is produced at a cost significantly lower than flash or magnetic media of the same capacity.

For backup, it probably will still make sense to use some kind of magnetic media.

Re:obligatory! (and more serious..)

[Anonymous Coward]

archiving MP3, I guess not many people have >100GB of MP3s?

root@Thesaurus:~# du -sh /space/stuff/audio_collection/
240G /space/stuff/audio_collection/
root@Thesaurus:~#

Re:450mw beam

[Maddog Batty]

When encapsulated within a system so that it is not possible for the beam to escape under normal usage then the whole system can be given a class 1 rating and a class 1 label. The laser itself is a class 3B and would have to have this rating if removed from the player. Current Blu-ray recorders are 250mW but are considered safe as they are encapsulated.

Re:How fast in m/s?

[Spatial]

Offhand, the read speed for 1x in bluray is 36Mbit/s. So we get 432Mbit/s.

For comparison, 1x DVD is 10Mbit/s.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't speak to other cars as it's the only one I seriously considered when I bought a few months back, but any basic Honda Civic with at least air-conditioning (ie not the cheapest of the cheap) has an aux/"iPod" port.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:obligatory! (and more serious..)

[bennomatic]

I used to work in the UC Berkeley library's conservation department, and what they did for scanning purposes--really, archiving rare works to microfilm--was to set the to-be-preserved books in a frame, manually flip a page, lower a non-glare glass cover over it to flatten the book, and snap a picture from a camera above.

I imagine that the process is the same for precious books now, just with digital cameras instead of microfilm.

Re:obligatory! (and more serious..)

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno how rolfwind does it, but I used to work for a State University that had some of this equipment to do it:

http://www.merrittgraphics.com/services/scanning/bookscan.php

But IIRC, you are talking about 6 figures to even get up and running with this kind of kit...

But they were pretty sweet to watch run, they could photograph all the odd or even pages in a in a ~500pg book in about an hour, of course then you had to reset it to get the pages on the other side of the binding, but still scanning a whole ~500pg book in ~2hrs with nearly 0 user intervention is pretty good.

Re:I don't get it

[RulerOf]

Remember that the reason Nintendo abandoned cartridges was because a 8.5 gigabyte DVD was cheaper than the equivalent ROM.

Two things:

First, those were probably EPROM's, not flash, but don't quote me on it.

Second, supply+demand+moore's law = totally different situation today.

...I wouldn't be suprirsed if a 1GB EPROM costs more than used car....

Re:obligatory! (and more serious..)

[nine-times]

Well first, even if you buy a legal version of video, that doesn't necessarily mean you get media. iTunes movies and TV shows, for example, are sold without media. If you want to back that stuff up, you'll need something additional. Second, even if you have a legal DVD or Bluray version, you might want to backup that purchased copy. Third, I wasn't specifically talking about movies or TV shows. I'm not even necessarily talking about video.

And then beyond all that, backing up to an external USB drive doesn't necessarily serve my purposes unless I'm buying new USB drives on a regular basis. I'm not just talking about maintaining a running mirror of my current hard drive contents, but maintaining a backup. By that, I mean that sometimes you want to keep copies at set increments, like having a monthly backup that you keep and don't overwrite. Not only does this protect you from a catastrophic failure of your hard drive, but also protects you from data being deleted or overwritten.

Ideally, those backups should be on some kind of WORM media (so I don't accidentally erase something while I'm restoring) that's cheap, reliable, and lightweight. Even for my personal stuff, I can burn a bunch of DVDs and mail them to someone. Since they're light and small, shipping won't be expensive. Since there are no moving parts, I don't have to worry very much about them breaking in transit, but since they're cheap it's not a big problem even if they do break.

Re:Worthless.

[sanosuke001]

How is this insightful? He said nothing. Sony's players are defective how? I have a PS3 and it plays BD movies. Doesn't seem defective to me. Also, you won't be hooking this up to a Sony player as it's a Sanyo product. Sanyo != Sony even though a lot of the letters are the same.

You were an HD-DVD fanboy weren't you? Bitter that your format ate dirt? I can understand the viewpoint of HD vs. SD, cost vs. utility increase but the Sony bashers are just useless to any conversation. Yes, you don't like Sony. Yes, they've made some stupid moves. No, not all their products suck.

Aside from the DRM in BD (which is pretty much par for the course and not a Sony-only issue) what's wrong with BD? If you don't like HD video, stick to DVDs. Nobody is forcing you to upgrade. And if you're going to bash Sony, do it on a Sony article.