Hitachi's 100GB Blu-ray disc drive

Sure, it's just a prototype for now, but we can't help but feel a bit smitten with any drive capable of playing 100GB of data off a single 4-layer optical disc. The BD camp was also touting 200GB, 8-layer discs as they have since 2004 (at least) while showing off the components that will usher in 8x performance (double-that of existing commercial gear) in a more realistic timeframe. When that might be exactly, no one's willing to say.

[Will @ Oct 3rd 2007 4:03AM]

Amazing (and the thought of EIGHT layers is crazy). But who knows how long it'll take for the price of this to be marketable (I mean blank media) seeing as a 25 gb BD-R is still about $20, or whether movie studios would adjust to them. So existing players wouldn't work with the disc (and a firmware update wouldn't help)? Any advancement's like this in the HD-DVD camp?

[Bob P. @ Oct 3rd 2007 6:57AM]

Will you need to shop around more :)

$20 is about right for buying 25GB BD-R's @ Best Buy, but if you look on the internet you can usually find them for around $12-13 and last month I got about 30 for $6.50 a piece on a 50% off sale.

Unfortunately that's still a little high iyam, but it's getting better.

The 50 GB are a lot harder to find deals for and the best I've seen is $30 with $32-35 being about normal.

[Will @ Oct 3rd 2007 7:04AM]

haha i normally do shop around but i technically don't have a burner and stuck the first price I got from a google search...then again, the average consumer (or more like a lot of people I come across) just head to best buy and buy the media without taking the time to reseach so $20 is what people'd still expect.

[Bob P. @ Oct 4th 2007 10:34AM]

Will, replying here to you question down below so that you'll get the email notification.

The drive is a prototype, but that doesn't mean that other drives can't be upgraded to read the disks. A prototype can be the same hardware with just new firmware, it's just the first of it's kind.

The main problem with increasing the layers is the quality of light that can be read after it has been reflected back to the optics. Mathematically Blu-ray max's out at 8 layers. This can be determined by the strength of the laser, the reflectivity of the layers that the laser has to focus through, the distance the laser's light has to travel and the medium it has to travel through and finally the numerical aperture of the optics. The problem Blu-ray has had with with increasing the layers has mostly been with tracking and stability. At 4 layers you now have half as much light to work with than you did at 2 layers so your tracking and stability has to be much better. So the question is what have they done to solve this problem. If they had to add hardware then it can't be firmware updateable, but if they didn't and it's quite possible that they didn't, then they can update it with fw.

Sorry at work so I'm writing this a little bit at a time so it might be a little disjointed.

[Will @ Oct 4th 2007 10:40AM]

thanks for the info Bob.

[V.I. @ Oct 3rd 2007 5:28AM]

I don't know if I would feel safe keeping 100 or 200 GB's of data on something I know can get sratched.

[ulovemikeroch @ Oct 3rd 2007 10:08PM]

Blu Ray disks are INCREDIBLY hard to scratch, especially through normal wear and tear. You might get a couple tiny or little scratches but thats it, at the most. There are tests where the only thing that rendered the disk unreadable was a butcher's knife. But before that a pizza cutter, pen and steel wool all failed to make a bluray disk unreadable.

[linw @ Oct 3rd 2007 5:29AM]

HOLY MOTHER OF COW.

I'm pretty sure you can fit the entire internets on that.

[nebulus @ Oct 3rd 2007 6:47AM]

How do we know thats not just a Britney Spears CD flipped upside down, can we get someone to take a peek underneath, just to check! ;)

[Bigg Russ @ Oct 3rd 2007 9:00AM]

People usually rush to Best Buy to buy things for simply that reason...they're in a rush.

[Traveler @ Oct 3rd 2007 9:47AM]

It may take some time for wide-spread usage, not unless they lower its cost.

[Bob P. @ Oct 3rd 2007 10:07AM]

Yeah I only have a burner because I picked one up at a discount when our company purchased a bunch in bulk.

Now that you can buy dvd-dl disks for around .80 a piece even the $6.50 25 GB BD-R's aren't worth it for personal backup. Though I have found that with a lot of trimming your can burn a HD football game on one 25GB disk.

Our company only uses the 50GB BD-R's. We buy in bulk so get a little discount. People laugh at the expense but they don't realize that we're actually saving. We're required to backup our data once a month on non-magnetic media. There's about 2TB's worth and it used to take about a little over a week of 1 guy swapping out DL disks constantly. Whoever was doing the backup was useless for the whole week and it drove them crazy ( it was rotated ). Now that we use the 50GB Blu-ray the guy can at least get other stuff done. So when you add up money saved from all the lost hours ( about $18,000 ) the price of the 50GB disks doesn't look too bad.

Personally I can't wait till these 100GB disks come out.

Oh btw. when we bought the drives. They only supported 25GB and we firmware updated them to 50GB so I don't see why we couldn't firwmare update them to 100GB. From what I remember the technical support people said that the hardware was compatible to 200GB using the 25GB per layer specs.

[Will @ Oct 4th 2007 6:05AM]

Just wondering, if it was as simple as a firmware update, why would (as the article states) be a need to create prototype disc drives to play the discs? But I'm sure it could be as simple as a firmware update down the road.

[E71 @ Oct 3rd 2007 10:29AM]

Okay. It still feels a little weird how Hitachi switched sides and is now releasing new products for the Blu-ray camp.

[Dave @ Oct 3rd 2007 10:42AM]

That rules. That that 30GB hd dud LOL :)

[Michael La Framboise @ Oct 3rd 2007 12:54PM]

heh, each time at these shows they put out disks on display - but WHY - I mean does the bottom of a 100gb disk look any different from that of a standard 700 meg one? :/

[eddy_88_nite @ Oct 3rd 2007 4:05PM]

imagine the porn guys!
But man you could cram a few games and video on that thing...

[Rick wilson @ Oct 4th 2007 7:19PM]

uhhh... oops. I didn't realize we weren't allowed to say when 100GB will be released... if you look hard enough at my past comments, I think you'll find the answer... Thing is (I think I'm allowed to say this), the 100GB disc isn't even a Prototype any more...