Look here. Holographic disks are finally shipping. A 300 GB disk costs $180.- now, sizes seem to be available up to 1.6 terabytes
Don't see how this effects blu-ray, it's cool tech but is overkill for retail movies. If it works well and cost comes down it could see good use for backing up data though.
Most consumers have a hard enough time being persuaded of the benefits of hd over dvd. There are virtually none who would see any difference between a compressed and uncompressed film. Look at mp3's vs cd's for a prime example of convenience over quality.
Extras, boxed sets, etc. For individual movies without extras, downloading is going to be the distribution method of choice in the not too distant future. For selling, for example, the entire Star Wars saga as a unit, or a full season of your favorite television show, complete with all the official extras under the sun, 300 GB disks offer a significant improvement on Blu-ray once the price comes down.
Will we become like gods when the sum of all human knowledge can be fit into a chip the size of a pinhead?
Only when the chip can be implanted in your brain and you can access the sum total of human knowledge, music, and art at will.
Televisions are going to be (and stay for the foreseeable future) 1080P max. The difference between a well-encoded Blu-Ray and uncompressed video on a 1080p screen is virtually nil. So, I don't think holographic disks will have any impact on home theater applications of BR. However, newer, bigger storage media are always welcomed in the computing sector.
If we ever reach that point as a species during my lifetime, I will be forced to play my hand against that abomination against life. Even if I have to be wheeled along in a wheelchair, wrapped in a blanket and gripping axes in both hands. This I promise.
I would be if I were the least bit worried some new storage format was about to supercede it. The home video market has just gone through 18 months of turmoil with the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format war; I don't think anyone's likely to introduce a new format any time soon. Even if they did, what advantage would it have? The holographic disks could store movies in higher resolution, but what would people watch them on?
Who are the early adopters for this as a form of home media though? On the PC, sure, but for entertainment purposes there doesn't seem to be a market right now. No increased video quality like the jump from DVD to HD, so nothing to hook videophiles. There wouldn't seem to be any major potential for increased profit for movie distributors so they won't be keen to jump into a new format war (whereas they were keen on HD because it offered the ability to charge more over the now cheap DVD market). Blu-ray will be cheap before this is, and if the best they can offer is "more episodes on a disc" nobody will care.
While the player is a bit much, the media's not bad... at launchless than twice the cost per gigabyte of the other optical formats currently (except CD-Rs), roughly equal cost per gigabyte of magnetic media and big enough to hold a ton of shit. To me it screams "Portable hard drive that won't break if you drop run a magent over it" By the time the price of the drive falls by a factor of 100, assuming the capacity of the discs increases as it's supposed to, this should be the bees knees.
Any increase in video quality, I'd be all over. I'm a visual junkie. Still, if Blu-Ray is already doing 1080p, it might be awhile before we see televisions have even higher resolution. Not to mention they'd have to standardize HD broadcast resolution again. (And how would they fit it through the pipes?)
I would be, too, but, until someone starts making higher resolution TV sets, there's no point. 1080p is already good enough for a wall-sized display. And the film grain is clearly visible in some material at that resolution; if we were to go up much higher, we'd soon exceed the resolution of the film (2000-4000 lines), so our viewing of feature films--at least those made for the last 100 years--wouldn't improve. However, if we did have displays that were good enough, news reports and other programs done in 2000 or 4000 line video would be EXTREMELY realistic. I heard about a Japanese experiment with video that has something like 10,000 lines of resolution and quality-wise is difficult to discern from looking through a window (except for not being stereoscopic).
What about those films filmed for IMAX screens? What resolution are they? I wait for the day every film is an IMAX film.
Rather than more resolution I would be happy if they just started to increase the framerate of movies. It's always hard to go back to watching motion in a film or tv show when you have just been playing a game at 60fps. It adds a lot to the realism.
Ah! That's a horse of another color. Yes, you'd need A LOT more resolution to faithfully render IMAX, because it's so much bigger than 35mm. The film itself isn't really higher resolution; there's simply more area to capture the image on. Of course, the only reason IMAX needs to be so big is because it's projected onto HUGE screens. An IMAX film mastered in 1080p showing on a 60 or 70 inch set in your living room is going to look every bit as fantastic (albeit not as large).
I agree with this. I'd also say that I don't think this holographic disk will make it anywhere near the retail movie market and will be used more for home computer storage. I say that because the non-technical public will have the chance to download movies of the same quality as those encoded on BD by the time these disks get off their feet. I see this as a Sony minidisk type of short term format.
You'll wait for a long time. IMAX is shot on 70mm film, which gets very expensive while digital gains more and more of a foothold. It requires specialized equipment for the whole process, most of it huge and very impractical. The resolution is impressing, tho. I'd estimate is somewhere around 9000x6500 or something. Of course you'd need your own multi million $ theater to actually enjoy it.
In Vancouver, there is also something called an OMNIMAX. Instead of just a really huge screen an IMAX uses, an OMNIMAX is a half-dome shaped screen. It completely immerses you in the picture. (Well, except for the floor and the people around you.) I am not sure whether an OMNIMAX is on bigger film than IMAX, or they just shoot it with a special lens. In any case, it is quite an experience, and you guys should check it out when you have the chance.
I've heard of that, I always wondered if it looked like you were using a fisheye lens or if it is somehow like normal.
Haven't seen one since maybe Jr. High, in the early 80s. The Science Museum of Minnesota had one. IIRC it looked normal. IIRC.
It looks normal. I've been to one and it is a shitty situation where you crane your neck all around to see what is behind you, above you, etc. They suck. Regular curved IMAX is better... still goes as wide as your peripheral vision and isn't so distracting.
