The Hindu : National : Jumbo DVDs coming

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, May 29, 2005

National

National

Jumbo DVDs coming — but at what price?

Anand Parthasarathy

A new contender raises the storage stakes — a hundred fold

DVDs being packed in the Greater Noida plant of Moser Baer. The company is geared to turn out either Blu Ray or HD-DVD disks in the future.

BANGALORE: `Size Does Matter' — if you want to be pack leader in the optical storage business. And the latest contender for the title of `Digital Godzilla' has just stomped into the arena, promising a jumbo-sized offering that dwarfs all rivals in the field. United States-based storage player Iomega, has announced, it has been granted two optical storage patents, that if converted into a production process, can turn out Digital Versatile Disks (DVDs) with a mind-boggling 850 giga bytes (GB)capacity — that is 850 billion bits of information. This will make the devices about 100 times bigger than the biggest DVDs available today — and with at least 20 times more capacity than the next-generation high-density formats being readied for year-end availability.

Ironically, to achieve these huge storage capacities, Iomega engineers have exploited nano technology — the science of very small particles, touching atom sizes. In its patent document, released by the U.S. Patent Office, Iomega calls its technology ``Nano-Grating'' — encoding data on the surface of the DVD, using nano-sized particles.

Experts believe the transition from patent to product could take anything from two to five years. Today's 4.5 GB DVDs (9 GB, double sided) are set to be replaced by the high-density formats expected by end 2005. Unfortunately the old VHS-versus-Beta videocassette format wars of the 1980s seem to be replaying: Two rival camps have emerged in the high-density DVD business. One — Blu-Ray — is backed by Sony, Hitachi, TDK, Panasonic and others. The other — HD-DVD (for High Density DVD) — is supported by Toshiba, Sanyo and NEC. The formats which will increase today's storage capacity at least ten-fold, are incompatible and will force customers to make a choice between two types of disks and players.

The heads of Sony and Toshiba recently announced that they would meet soon and try to end the deadlock. But both camps have raised the stakes, with 'macho' announcements. Last week, TDK announced a 100-GB Blu Ray DVD — with an eye on the huge market for Sony PlayStation players.

The HD-DVD camp has been touting the support for its format, from Hollywood biggies Warner Brothers and Universal: Movies form the biggest potential market for DVDs. The Blu-Ray boys have been saying: ``So what! We have Walt Disney and Twentieth Century-Fox in our corner.''

The difference between the two formats is minuscule: In Blu-Ray DVDs, the data layer is on the surface, covered by a protective coat.

In the HD-DVD, the data layer is sandwiched between two substrates. Both use the shorter wave length of the blue laser rather than the red laser of today's CDs and DVDs, to squeeze more data on the same-sized platter.

Canny manufacturers — including Greater Noida (UP) -based Moser Baer, the world's number 3, optical storage company — have been hedging their bets, tooling to do go either way, at short notice, once the shakeout between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD occurs. However the high initial cost of the high density DVDs — of either format — estimated to be Rs. 1,000- Rs. 2,000 equivalent per disk, may put off buyers in price sensitive markets such as India, till usage proliferates worldwide.

And for customers, the message is: Wait and watch — with a prayer that an avaricious industry does not face them with conflicting standards and expect them to pay for its sins by foisting the additional cost of dual-format players and recorders on the buyer.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National