where do you see optical media going? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 04, 2025, 07:48:16 pm
content: I see optical media (blu ray) is being discontinued in many places. Personally I feel like its a big sham because I am starting to feel like they are just selling me tickets to go some where to a nanometer sized physical location that could disappear at any time. Master servers are bad enough. I avoided buying alot of stuff because I was not looking to be left snubbed with some ticket stubs for a theater or arcade that disappeared lol.I wonder if we will see some optical storage media in the terabyte range that keeps reliable storage around.https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-entertainment/lg-one-of-the-last-holdouts-ceases-production-of-blu-ray-players/But it is an opportunity for another manufacturer to pick up production, theoretically much of the machine tools required for production should be going down in price and going up in capability making the technology more accessible to manufacture. I am constantly seeing off brand but very nice looking optics positioner equipment and stuff like that showing up which might exceed the requirements for manufacture of optical media manufacturing equipment, there seems to be alot of progress for cheap precision static positoners and know how on how to make them that was just not there 20 years ago. I think alot of the unique R&D developments that were basically essential for optical media manufacturing have become mainstream for general purpose optics use, especially with the proliferation of laser cutters, inferometers, etcnon physical makes me think I am buying things from this joker. Its supposed to be a program but their trying to sell tickets for computer systems on ice like its a 1960 multics operation

author: Foxxz
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2025, 02:11:27 am
content: I always wondered, after DVD, why they didn't go to something like read-only thumb drives. I guess duplication costs. But it would have been smaller and compatible with many devices without the need for a special, and physically large, optical drive. The media would have been more physically resilient. And the amount of speed and storage could be customized for the movie bitrate. Another benefit being non-existent seek times. USB2 is fast enough for even the highest bitrate bluray movies. They could have still encrypted the movies and even added special hardware in the USB stick for additional authentication methods.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2025, 11:22:33 am
content: I still use DVD+ram, 4.5GB cartridges

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2025, 02:46:31 am
content: How about just have digital downloads without the DRM nonsense?

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2025, 02:52:55 am
content: Well, you may be in luck:https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06980-y

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2025, 02:54:29 am
content: it does seem to oscillate, they did like to use chips for storage a long time ago in lieu of a mag drive

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2025, 03:07:54 am
content: QuoteKnew i should have patented the idea i had during a drunken discussion way back in the early 90's over which was better ,mini disc or digital compact cassette,were i suggested why not just chuck it on a bloody big eprom instead of having your media spinning.As for the future, whats the porn industry doing? they've always been early adopters of the whats best way to get there media to the general public,right back to the first printing press

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2025, 07:56:20 am
content: There is no consumer demand for an optical media better than Blu-ray, so it will be the last one. I doubt it will be replaced with anything.Quote from: Foxxz on January 05, 2025, 02:11:27 amThat would have meant Flash based media with a much shorter retention time than optical media. While the copyright owners would enjoy this, buyers would have been upset to discover that the physical media they purchased only lasted a few years.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2025, 07:59:48 am
content: I wonder if thats really true or if its just because they can't figure things outFor instance imagine a optic media that you lay down over a reader like wireless charging and it scans a 20TB disk using advanced mems systems, without spinning it.I think the right implementation would lay waste to all this bull crap we have now.

author: Haenk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2025, 02:31:38 pm
content: Large capacity physical media will simply disappear (for household media content) - while there are still some hoarders and collectors, most people consider media now being a consumable. Which is why streaming services have been growing ever since the days of inventing Netflix.And really, I did my maths and stopped buying physical media, with a few exceptions. I have a good four-digit number of CDs, a high three digit number of vinyl, had a good three digit number of DVDs (now down to maybe 100, gave the rest of them away), and a good three digit number of BDs. However I noticed I watched most movies only once (too boring, to watch them a second time), so in my calculation, one purchased DVD/BD equals 2 months of subscription to at least 2 movie streaming platforms. So watching one movie per month is a breakeven. And I do not care, if I have a physical copy of it, as I would likely not watch it again for another decade.There comes a time in life, when collecting stuff just requires too much space; and - for ones own good - the collections needs a bit of reduction. Trust me in this

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2025, 02:39:09 pm
content: Quote from: Foxxz on January 05, 2025, 02:11:27 amYou do realise that when the first generation 4.x GB blu-ray disks were introduced, a 32MB (mega, not giga) memory stick was all most people could afford?

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2025, 07:11:42 pm
content: Quote from: Haenk on January 13, 2025, 02:31:38 pmturn off youtube for a month and movies become interesting again

author: paul8f
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2025, 10:52:14 pm
content: Good for back-ups I suppose.Just store the discs properly, and your data is safe for years and years.

author: Hogwild
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2025, 06:31:12 pm
content: TheVerge: Sony Japan ends production of recordable Blu-rays with ‘no successor’ plannedhttps://www.theverge.com/2025/1/24/24350993/sony-recordable-blu-ray-end-production-no-successorI'm not clear if this just applies to Japan or globally?

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2025, 06:58:11 pm
content: Quote from: Hogwild on January 25, 2025, 06:31:12 pmI think there was also an announcement about a Blu-ray pressing plant closing. Most of the drive making has already ended.It looks like in a couple of years the only things that will be available for archival storage are LTO drives.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2025, 12:17:08 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on January 25, 2025, 06:58:11 pmFor the cost of one LTO drive, I can build a pair of 100+TB servers with disk storage and use one as an offline or online backup of the other.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2025, 02:13:17 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on January 26, 2025, 12:17:08 pmPerhaps, but more and more people with lots of data to back up for the long term are going down the LTO route. Banks, insurance, governments, and the media. The BBC are putting their entire historical record that is still readable onto LTO. That's hundreds of thousands of video tapes. I assume all the other TV, movie, recording studio and other organisations are doing the same. Those tapes have a high chance of a good lifetime when stored well. They seem to have figured out how to make tapes that reliably last, and are beyond debacles like the huge volume of material lost on Ampex tapes that went sticky.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2025, 03:26:10 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on January 26, 2025, 02:13:17 pmMy point would be that LTO is not a replacement for Bluray, or any other backup system that a home user might use. The cost of an LTO drive for corporate applications is not a problem for them, but I doubt their suitability for archival purposes.My own experience with various tape backup systems is that they are all unreliable, although I did have good results with QIC systems from Summit Memory.I wonder when hard drives will become unavailable, leaving only SSDs.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2025, 03:40:32 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on January 26, 2025, 03:26:10 pmThe big problem with tape drives is when they are not used in a clean room. They are putting data onto tape with densities like a hard disc drive, and they had to start sealing up hard disc to keep them clean long ago. Many tape devices which have performed poorly in typical office conditions have been trouble free when used only in a computer room with basic filtered air. Data8, for example, was a great solution when used in a filtered air computer room with no smokers, food and drinks around. Everyone I know who complained about them used them in a messy office. QIC drives looked super crude, yet achieved good results. They were pretty low density, though.As for hard disks going away, I assume this is going to happen in the not too distant future. Do the disk people have anything in store for use beyond HAMR? That's keeping life in the hard disc market right now, with 48TB drives being announced. SSDs are most definitely not an archival medium right now, and there seems nothing on the horizon which will do anything but make them worse for long term storage.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2025, 04:02:43 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on January 26, 2025, 03:40:32 pmThe problems I had with tape were unreliability. For QIC, most drives did not have properly hardened heads, so wore out in short order, but of course a drive would happily write a tape and report it good when it was bad. Summit Memory systems was an exception to that and their drives lasted and worked until obsolete.Helical scanned drives were just unreliable. Tapes did not work in more than one drive, and often did not even work in the same drive. If the method requires a clean room, then I would consider it questionable anyway.QuoteHAMR is a big deal by itself. There might be optical bulk storage methods that work within the volume of a material rather than a surface which will increase data density, but nothing is commercial.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2025, 04:25:44 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on January 26, 2025, 04:02:43 pmHelically scanned drives and their tapes have wear issues, but that's not really a problem for archiving. You don't reuse the tape a lot. There is nothing that is especially a reliability problem with them. Dirt is the big issue. If you want really high density dirt is a major issue, whatever kind of storage device you use. I've never experienced tape in a computer room have reliability problems. A couple of iffy DDS drives (I can't remember the make) used to cause us grief, but that was just a bad design. Tapes usually interchange OK with clean, well maintained equipment.

author: Odd-Job
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 06, 2025, 09:55:56 am
content: LTO.Back in the nineties-2000 whilst being an educator at NSW TAFE, this storage size, longevity discussion was a regular in the mealroom. 286 386 486/dx2 etc Ram 4- 16Mb ram 3.5 & 5" FDD, 10-40 Mb HDD Omega drv floppy was the buzz (?). As we were required to weekly back up to magnetic tape which took forever and a lot of tape cassettes and safes in cool rooms etc. I remember jokingly offering my idea of using the helical scanning of a hot rod'ed BETAMAX video machine with high head speed and long record mode operating, write width of about 1.2 -1.5mm on a 2 ( low speed 4 hours) hour tape. I was jibbed at for even DARING to mention the betamax word, and was laughing told to try VHS and i rebutted with the old 60hz faster than 50hz chestnut and vhs max of 4 hours (8 hrs low qual).Sony had introduced its PCM (digital) pulse-code modulation which straight away put it miles ahead of analog VHS and a candidate for digital data recording.I recall sitting down and doing some calculation based on a tape length range of 40 Metres to 250 Metres @ βl and βlll recording speeds 1X & 3X respectively.32bit's 40 Mts tape βl was about 30 Mbyte, βlll about 120 Mbyte; 250 Mts tape about 6.5 times capacity, (ie 190-750Mb ) These were astounding potential data storage capacities for the day and could have been made functional with enough $$ thrown at it, all from simple modification of existing equipment/ technology.Please remember these were back of envelope/ coaster calcs based on standards and data from Sony and JVC. R/W Heads had between 2-6 magnetic coil heads for utilization and to play around with (6 head= 3, write read write read write read/ revolution). Head RPM and other variables, I think we played around with head speed of 50rpm -500rpm, 210mm/sec 2.1M/sec based on an 80mm(?) Video head ( from thinning memory). Print thru, moisture, temperature control, Cataloguing, time wasting process all problems, but 'LTO was the way to go'™ , Head RPM vibration, heat, other little problems to solve.I expect to sit corrected and maybe flamed, but this was 25-35 years ago.Oddjobover

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 06, 2025, 06:08:56 pm
content: There were several attempts to repurpose video standards for dense data. Versions of both VHS and Betamax existed both as general data stores and for digital video. I think the only one that got traction was the use of Video 8 cassettes for data as Data 8, pioneered by Exabyte, which was actually a big deal for backups for a while. DAT was repurposed as DDS for general purpose data storage, but DAT was a helically scanned dense digital storage medium anyway. Just one that was dedicated to audio in some of its details about ensuring a smooth flow of bits at a specific rate for real time operation. DDS didn't need those timing assurances, but needed really good data integrity,