Pioneer shows off 400GB optical disc...oh shit Blu-what?

[ManaByte]

http://www.edge-online.com/features/bigger-than-blu-ray

In the picture above you will see the materialized form of one of Pioneer's boldest claims in recent memory: a 400GB optical disc, of 16 layers with a capacity of 25GB each.

What's missing from this equation is the word Blu-ray. In fact, yesterday at the IT Month Fair in Taipei, Taiwan, Pioneer was coy about not using the term Blu-ray at all when unveiling its newest disc, save for suffixing it to “16 times the storage of..."

It is because this is not a Blu-ray disc at all, this is a highly-condensed optical disc that the company proposed back in July and exhibited for the first time yesterday. Now Pioneer is making three new promises: the 400GB read-only disc will hit mass production sometime in 2010, rewritable versions will come through before 2012, and a 1TB version will become available within five years.

The consoles you have right now will not be able to play these discs. Numerous sources have reported that the disc is compatible with Blu-ray players (and therefore PS3s) already on the market. Speaking to Edge, Pioneer said the opposite was true. “Current BD players and drives would not be able to read these discs,” the company said, adding that the technology is “at this time not being proposed as a candidate for addition to the existing Blu-ray Disc format.”

However, the company went on to say that a firmware upgrade may allow Blu-ray players to read the disc, putting Sony’s PS3 straight into the spotlight as the likeliest device available today that could read them.

The potential of these discs are understandably huge for the games industry, a sector which has in part driven the growth of the disc format since the Playstation era. So far there has been only one developer who has put into question the limitations of a 50GB Blu-ray disc. Back in March, Hideo Kojima said that his development studio “always talked about where to cut and what to compress” during the development stages of MGS4, adding that there was “not enough space at all” on a single Blu-ray disc.

At the time of writing SCEA were not available to discuss whether the company was looking into the possibilities of the technology.

[Oblivion]

Is this a good idea? If it's not compatible with blu ray, won't it get totally fucked when they start production?

[Eel O'Brian]

they better coat these things in liquid diamonds

imagine one scratch taking out a hard drive's worth of stuff

[BlueTsunami]

You know what? At this point, I could give a shit about Capacity, something needs to be done about raw transfer speeds.

[Tieno]

You know what? At this point, I could give a shit about Capacity, something needs to be done about raw transfer speeds.

HOLOMOGRAPHIC STORAGE

[cool breeze]

It says right there it works on the PS3 and other players that would allow firmware upgrades, so cool.  Don't think it will ever be needed video games unless Sony was like "Every PS2 game on one disk for some reason", but movie/tv collection sets on one disk would be awesome.

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Developed at Yu Suzuki's request.

[Don Flamenco]

3 hour loading times.  or a two hour install time.   

[littlemathletics]

You know what? At this point, I could give a shit about Capacity, something needs to be done about raw transfer speeds.

Enough of your practicalities.

[Bildi]

You know what? At this point, I could give a shit about Capacity, something needs to be done about raw transfer speeds.

True.  I think optical needs to take a hike, or needs a dramatic shake-up to rectify this issue.

Is this a good idea? If it's not compatible with blu ray, won't it get totally fucked when they start production?

I don't know, is bluray popular enough for this to be an issue?  I still think there's a chance digital distribution will kill bluray before it starts.

[Don Flamenco]

this is just grandstanding.  I don't think we'll see these on the market any time soon.

[littlemathletics]

I don't know, is bluray popular enough for this to be an issue?  I still think there's a chance digital distribution will kill bluray before it starts.

It's still very much the de facto new optical medium rather than a real successor to DVD.