1000 terabytes on a DVD

[Homer]

1000 terabytes is a fracking bleepload. It's about 50,000 average movies. A team of scientists found a way around a law of the physics that set a finite upper limit on optical storage density, a limit which has already been reached in DVD technology. Explained on a site which writes about science in journalistic style: http://theconversation.com/more-data-st ... -dvd-15306

[Somchai Turdsak]

Interesting story. It wasn't terribly long ago that single DVD movies often came in a set of 2 CDs.

[Pleng]

Well optical media technology needs to do something to stay relevant.

When CDs came out they stored 640Mb compared to the average hard drive at the time of 30 or 40Mb
When DVD's came out they (single layered) held 4Gb when hard drives were averaging 2-8Gb (so you could still at least back up your entire hard disk on a disc)
When BluRay came out their 35Gb storage seemed pretty irrelevant in the days of 1TB hard disks!

1000Tb is a "wow" amount of storage. The same sort of "wow" that the original CD gave us in back in the day, and enough to warrant optical media for storage again, despite its many drawbacks!

[Onlychaam]

It's not all about storage capacity, DVD readers are still awfully slow. I love my good old tape player for this, you put the tape in and that's it! But DVD no, you can't even open it at once because it takes some time just to figure out if a disc is already in or not, then it takes some more time to discover the new disc and painfully go through all the menus and warnings... Besides, many DVDs I had bought some years ago are now scratched or can't be read anymore for some reason. I hate DVDs and keep all my movies on hard drives. End of rant, I feel better

[Ginjaninja]

Besides, many DVDs I had bought some years ago are now scratched or can't be read anymore for some reason. I hate DVDs and keep all my movies on hard drives. End of rant, I feel better

I agree... and that's why mini-disc was my favourite but shame it never took off.

GN.