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Is optical media REALLY as dead as Apple says?
I thought this was really interesting, and was curious what people here thought of it. A startup company called Milleniata is poised to introduced a new type of optical media that solves some of the biggest problems that many people give for wanting to leave it behind:
https://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/new_m-disc_technology_promises_perman...
https://www.informationweek.com/byte/reviews/personal-tech/storage-memory/23...
Basically, the discs use a new recording method that solves the “data rot” issues of other optical discs. Instead of just changing the surface of a recording layer made of organic dye, the new discs (called m-discs) use a more powerful laser that literally “etches” the data into a harder, inorganic “rock-like” layer- so it isn’t susceptible to the issues that have to be looked out for with standard discs…
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“THAT’S our fail-safe point. Up until here, we still have enough track to stop the locomotive before it plunges into the ravine… But after this windmill it’s the future or bust.” -
6 Replies
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Greg,
I’m still making some writable DVD’s My larger selling work goes to a replicator.
But I think the writing is on the wall!Jeff
http://www.narrowroadmedia.com
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We can only hope that this company is as successful as they hope to be.
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Yea, that’s all well and good but will it stand up to this? lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OHf1QB5vBg
😉~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
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Off-Topic, but every time Blendtech makes another “Will It Blend?” video, they sell a lot of blenders. (Which start at $450).
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Crikey… who needs editing programs when one of those can wizz up a movie in seconds?
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I’m not sure the world is leaving behind optical media as quickly as Apple would like use to believe.
Do consider: Apple makes a great deal of money selling folks on the idea of video downloads being the future. They’re selling, sure, but just like the iPod AAC downloads of last decade, they’re selling an inferior product for the same price. Apple’s “HD” is 720/24p or
540/30p, encoded in AVC/H.264 at up to 5Mb/s… and it can’t really change, since they have a few generations of iPods, iPhones, iPads, and Apple TVs to support. This is substantially lower resolution than broadcast HDTV (ATSC or DVB), much less Blu-ray.I think online video has a stronger niche in rentals. And that’s the real thing that’s eating into hard media sales. Think about it… when Blockbuster charged $5.00 for a rental, and I could probably buy the DVD on release-week sale for under $15.00, it was pretty easy to figure that, if I wanted to see that film more than once, I’d just buy the disc. With flat-rate on-demand services at under $8.00 a month, or physical rentals via RedBox now $1.00, the effective cost of temporary video has all but vanished. In fact, these services are having as much impact on cable/satellite TV subscriptions as they are on physical media.
Anyone who was around in the 80s and 90s probably remembers the various computer industry disc formats that arose, lived a short life, and then either died or lived on in some niche. CD pretty much replaced most such efforts, DVD and BD ground these into the ground. Not that there won’t be computer-only formats, but that such formats (like DVD-RAM or BD-XL) are more likely to be based on consumer formats.
I think the M-disc is inherently shooting for a niche: archival. And, just as these others, they’re leveraging the existing consumer format, rather than striking out on their own. Which is smart. If they really hit that $3.00/disc price… well, that’s “only” 10x more expensive than BD-R for backup. But for archival… if it’s that reliable, I’d absolutely use it for “gold masters” of every DVD5 I make. I’d still keep ’em all on the RAID, but that’s a level of security you’ll never get with standard DVD-Rs.
As for web-based storage.. it’s for a different purpose, right now anyway. Most people don’t have Dropbox or other “cloud” storage accounts that’ll hold more than a single DVD5, much less a BD25’s worth of data. The point of that is to have a few things available that you can access anywhere. The speed of the network is probably going to be a limiting factor on this kind of storage, no matter how many free GB these services are about to offer you.
-Dave
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