About a month ago, Pioneer announced that they had developed a 400GB Blu-ray Disc. Not satisfied that they had exhausted all avenues, they continued developed and found a way to add four additional layers, bringing the total disc capacity to 500GB. As with the 400GB version, the disc is compatible with current Blu-ray drives found in computers, players, and recorders.
Brendan Sheridan, Pioneer Multimedia Division Product Manager, commented, "While Blu-ray discs (BD), offering both 25GB and 50GB, are sufficient for users' current demands, we envision the need for a technology that can support far greater capacities as HD streaming in particular becomes commonplace and users build larger files of digital content. The multi-layered method is compatible with Blu-ray devices providing a long term future for the technology and is more easily produced when compared to competing technologies such as holographic storage."
Currently the disc only exists as an experiment, but Pioneer is working with the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) to make the method a standard of the format. It is expected - if approved - it will take between two and four years for the discs to hit the open market.
WOW! That single disc is as big as my entire hard drive!
That is amazing! And something HD DVD never could have done.
And only 2 to 4 years away, this is technology we will see sooner than I thought.
TAKE THAT HD-DVD!!!! Amazing, can't wait to start buying television series seasons on one
BD500! Ooooh, wonder if old George will put the entire Star Wars anthology on one disk??? LOL
greedy mo-fo better go ahead and release it while he can still charge by the disk. Lmao
This is a great boone for BD and the computing world especially ! We are watching this very closely! But as far as posting comments about HD-DVD (which is no longer in development at all ) - Let the dead R.I.P. it's not even an issue anymore. Let's make sure that we are up to task to completely enjoy this medium, and maintain equipment that truly shows what it can do hmmmm?
Are you kidding me? 500GB on one disc? I really hope the home video companies will embrace this for large projects and traditional multi disc presentations. Hell, this paves the way for home 2K presentations as well. BONUS!
This means little for consumer devices. The number of layers in a consumer blu ray disc will always be one or two. Even if some future profile upped the number of layers, they'd still have to ensure that at least one or two were readable by existing players.
Multi layer BDs are more likely to find use in vertical markets such as digital projection systems than in consumer kit.
yeah that's great and all but can't you focus on working on a 100 GB disc that can contains movies and later on worry about bigger content discs that cannot contain movies ?
these experimental multi-layered discs are for data only, not movies. I hope this changes but so far nothing announced in that direction
Now if they wanted, they could put the complete Lord of the Rings Extended Editions on one disc and still have room for tons of extras. Or how about all 6 episodes of Star Wars!
I was under the assumption that discs of this size might not be used for our benefit but the fact that they are compatible with current players makes you wonder.
All for these big discs as it will drive the cost of the smaller discs - down. However, what concerns me is the data integrity long and short term with so many layers. Any ideas on that?
LOL, weren't the HD DVDers boasting towards the end that a 51GB disc was in the work that would wipe out Blu? But it wouldn't play on any current drives that HD DVD had.
This was the biggest reason I went w/ Blu to begin with. Just from the potential of storing up to 500GB of data. Two/Four years - def sooner release in my opinion!
I think we might want to keep expectations in check for a bit... first, 2 to 4 years for the technology, but those discs will have HUGE prices attached to them. This is a storage medium for large data archval first... I doubt we will see movie studios pushing a BD500 to us within 5 to 7 years... that only represents a 2 year wait after the media is ready. By then BD25's will be history and BD50 prices will be far lower than today. BD500 could have a huge impact to data processing first... movies much later.
I wonder if a HD movie was placed on a 500GB disk if the filmmakers would still make movie collections consist of multiple Blu-ray disks or if they will finially wake up and put everything on 1 single Blu-ray disk. I'd like to see the entire directors cut LOTR on 1 disk. No more loosing disk 3 of 4.
GASP! that is SO AWESOME!!!!!!!!!! i mean, you could put Hogan Knows Best season's 1-5 on that one disc! even better: Zoey 101 season's 1-7, or even more better: you could put every Drake and Josh episode ever made on Nickelodeon on that 1 disc and have a blast watching it in 1080P High definition!
I guess this means... Blu-ray will last long longer than 10 years, you never know some company might find a way to put 1TB on a Blu-ray disc... thats alot of more than a blu-ray dick
"GASP! that is SO AWESOME!!!!!!!!!! i mean, you could put Hogan Knows Best season's 1-5 on that one disc! even better: Zoey 101 season's 1-7, or even more better: you could put every Drake and Josh episode ever made on Nickelodeon on that 1 disc and have a blast watching it in 1080P High definition!"
Could this size actually give us uncompressed video? Imagine an entire movie in 1080p with no
compression at all. I am not sure it is worth it, since compression is so good now.
Plus the gaming! Think about what kind of games would take up a 500GB disc! OMG. MGS4 eat
your heart out. This would outdo that by more than 10 fold!
Pioneer rocks! They truly are the Pioneers of technology, at least in this medium.
Warner will still more than likely use dolby digital and put the extra features on dvds. Then what will you it doesnt need a lossless audio codec, people say?
Hell, if we get up to 100GB, that would be great. 500? Blu-ray is here to stay. It may be the final format EVER (until they can just download movies directly to my brain, that is).
Second comment I know but I just thought of something. Imagine just how awesome a PS3 game would look on this if they took full advantage of a 500GB disc. O.O
MSchinke took the words out of my mouth
Id like to fill my my Dual Apple 30s please.
Thatll be 5120x1900 pixels give or take
But seriously, with this in mind, BD can go further than what I mostly author on.
I already have clients asking if they can go higher than HD.
ok, hold the horses... how exactly is this compatible with current players? all current players? I sorta doubt that. Any explanation on how exactly this would be possible?
Don't get me wrong, 500GB per disc would be awesome, even 100GB per disc would be, but I just can't see how they can make current players suddenly be able to read more than 2 layers.
No! Uncompressed video is WAY processor intensive and will require a slightly faster read speed - to the tune of 248mbps or more.
Plus, an uncompressed video will require a bit more space than 500GB.
Been there, tried that - didn't work!
I hope when this becomes mainstream, no studio will ever have an excuse to not use lossless audio!! I would like to see, in particular, exclusive use of PCM tracks.
That is very very very very awesome! i would absolutely love if that 500GB blu-ray disc works on my Playstation 3 sucessfully! i mean, you could put all 80 episodes of Drake & Josh on that disc and that would just be plain awesome to have every Drake & Josh ever made on one single blu-ray disc! just think, no more waiting for "1-4" Drake & Josh episodes each day, you could have all them and choose which ever one you want on that single 500GB blu-ray disc!
About a month ago, 
! We are watching this very closely! But as far as posting comments about HD-DVD (which is no longer in development at all 
) - Let the dead R.I.P. it's not even an issue anymore. Let's make sure that we are up to task to completely enjoy this medium, and maintain equipment that truly shows what it can do hmmmm? 
wow! 
