Why This New CD Could Change Storage

A

alphachino

Member


Interesting video in light of recent Sony murmurs. A new optical format is probably needed, what with some games like the new CoD requiring 500GB I believe. Not holding my breath though... I've been hearing about revolutionary optical media formats since the 90s but nothing came of them. CD>DVD>BR were just evolutions as opposed to revolutions.
 
That is cool. But there is a very important question: What are the transfer speeds on this medium.
If it's something like 128Mbits, it's going to take a lot of time to transfer those 200.000GB.
 
winjer said:
That is cool. But there is a very important question: What are the transfer speeds on this medium.
If it's something like 128Mbits, it's going to take a lot of time to transfer those 200.000GB.
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Yep.
We're going to need a new version of Kenwood's True-X technology.
 
winjer said:
That is cool. But there is a very important question: What are the transfer speeds on this medium.
If it's something like 128Mbits, it's going to take a lot of time to transfer those 200.000GB.
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Just need to spin it fast before it flys apart and sends shrapnel across the room. MY EYE!
 
winjer said:
That is cool. But there is a very important question: What are the transfer speeds on this medium.
If it's something like 128Mbits, it's going to take a lot of time to transfer those 200.000GB.
Click to expand...
Even if the sequential read/write speed is good, it still needs a moving laser pointer to access parts of the disc. So when dealing with many small files at random parts of the disk, that random access will have terrible latency. You can only do so much with mechanical parts, no matter how good technology is they will always be the slowest part of the chain. And the most fragile. It's ancient technology that doesn't have a place in today's digital world. Even hard discs (that are multiple times faster than any optical drive will ever be) are on their way out.
 
Am I tripping because I know I seen Call of Duty because clicking on the thread but then I seen CD when I entered the thread then read CoD in the OP.

Did the thread title change in the middle of me entering the thread?
 
onQ123 said:
Am I tripping because I know I seen Call of Duty because clicking on the thread but then I seen CD when I entered the thread then read CoD in the OP.

Did the thread title change in the middle of me entering the thread?
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No, it didn't change. OP is saying that something like this new CD is needed because CoD is going to be 500 GB.
 
I feel like we would've had a major breakthrough post-BluRay by now if media weren't served mainly via streaming/internet downloads these days. Not a strong incentive when it's not holding back consumers consuming product.

Speaking of COD, I bought MWIII 2023 physical/on-disc, and the install size is 240GB, yet it only came with one BluRay. So is there really a use-case for optical discs with greatly more storage? Seems like we're doing okay.
 
Sony came up with storage cassette tapes that can hold 350GB back in 2017. Should just put tape drives in consoles since games dont run off the disc anymore and are only good for installing the base game to the hdd.
 
No new disc can change storage... the problem with storage media is not that we need new formats that can hold more data, its that there is a better way to distribute what we typically use these media for that cuts any physical format out of the equation.

And that is the internet, and speeds are getting faster and faster every year. You know a tech is going out the window when in the time it would take you to o to a store, pick it up, get back home and put it in your player/console (or for it to be delivered to you)... someone else would have already downloaded whatever and starting consuming. Outside sheer stubbornness, there is no reason for anything to be distributed via optical media anymore.
 
alphachino said:


Interesting video in light of recent Sony murmurs. A new optical format is probably needed, what with some games like the new CoD requiring 500GB I believe. Not holding my breath though... I've been hearing about revolutionary optical media formats since the 90s but nothing came of them. CD>DVD>BR were just evolutions as opposed to revolutions.
Click to expand...


I'm part of the niche crowd who just spent over $500 on a region free Panasonic UB-820 UHD player and even I know there won't be another physical disc successor. Its done after UHD, so enjoy it while its here.
 
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ManaByte said:
This place is a bullshit repository now.
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Bullshit how? requiring 500GB doesn't necessarily mean the install size is 500GB, but often extra space is required for download/decompression/install.

With MWIII pushing 240GB, is it so hard to believe the next CoD will go way beyond that?
 
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Mr.Phoenix said:
No new disc can change storage... the problem with storage media is not that we need new formats that can hold more data, its that there is a better way to distribute what we typically use these media for that cuts any physical format out of the equation.

And that is the internet, and speeds are getting faster and faster every year. You know a tech is going out the window when in the time it would take you to o to a store, pick it up, get back home and put it in your player/console (or for it to be delivered to you)... someone else would have already downloaded whatever and starting consuming. Outside sheer stubbornness, there is no reason for anything to be distributed via optical media anymore.
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If you want the best way to view movies, UHD Blu-ray is still where its at because of the way better compression, audio track choices and extra features.
 
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I'm tired of their noise, with that amount of storage it doesn't add up to me, it's dated, find another way.
 
nkarafo said:
Yeah but still needs a device with moving mechanical parts to function.

Mechanical stuff need to go away and never return.
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Why I just booted up both the PSX & PS2 and both work.
The problem we run into is drive noise, the lack of research into it the the main problem.
If they bothered they probably could come up with something.
 
Sony already had a standard for this, Archival Disc which currently stores 300GB, with 500GB to be expected. There are economic reasons why Sony or Microsoft are not choosing to pursue a new physical format, with Gamepass being the main focus for Microsoft.
If there is a new standard, the PC shouldn't be left out. Whilst we all love Steam, I do not like the lack of physical ownership for PC game, and the option to install games off a physical drive. The only viable option for now is to purchase games off GOG, then backup the installers to Blu-ray.
El Muerto said:
Sony came up with storage cassette tapes that can hold 350GB back in 2017. Should just put tape drives in consoles since games dont run off the disc anymore and are only good for installing the base game to the hdd.
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Not a bad idea, these read data in a linear fashion which is perfect for game installs.
 
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Optical is not the solution to preserving physical media.

It is in many ways obsolete and a bulky technology, its not just the disc but all the components that go into the disc reader, companies just arent making these components in the quantity they where in the past as fewer products ship with disc spinner readers.

It's gone from computers and CD music has been surprisingly supplanted by vinyl records (20 years ago you would have laughed at that) but it shows that physical can make a come back. Streaming music is for the commoners and vinyl is for premium collectors.

What's needed is a new physical format not like SD cards or the game carts Nintendo uses, not just for games but for movies/shows etc, where the reader is built into your TV and everything else, it might stave off the decline of physical media as its optical that is one of the reasons why its failing from popularity.
 
old-parts said:
Optical is not the solution to preserving physical media.

It is in many ways obsolete and a bulky technology, its not just the disc but all the components that go into the disc reader, companies just arent making these components in the quantity they where in the past as fewer products ship with disc spinner readers.

It's gone from computers and CD music has been surprisingly supplanted by vinyl records (20 years ago you would have laughed at that) but it shows that physical can make a come back. Streaming music is for the commoners and vinyl is for premium collectors.

What's needed is a new physical format not like SD cards or the game carts Nintendo uses, not just for games but for movies/shows etc, where the reader is built into your TV and everything else, it might stave off the decline of physical media as its optical that is one of the reasons why its failing from popularity.
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Movies on USB? 🤔
 
SegaSnatcher said:
If you want the best way to view movies, UHD Blu-ray is still where its at because of the way better compression, audio track choices and extra features.
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The fact that there are fewer and fewer disc sales each year, or that there are even lossless digital stores now... should tell you how very few people actually care about the whole best way to watch movies.

Physical media is a dead format... for better or for worse.
 
simpatico said:
Sony better rehire the 250 people they laid off in the optical media division!
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Exactly why this will never be used. My prediction is that the industry will stick to Blu-ray, which is still big enough for 95% of games, until it goes all digital.
 
Mr.Phoenix said:
The fact that there are fewer and fewer disc sales each year, or that there are even lossless digital stores now... should tell you how very few people actually care about the whole best way to watch movies.

Physical media is a dead format... for better or for worse.
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UHD is doing way better than Laserdisc ever did. It isn't going anywhere anytime soon for the boutique market. You can still make a business selling physical releases even if its not as popular as previous formats.

I'm saying for people who want the best UHD Blu-ray is still an option with many new titles still being released. I just bought Robocop 2 for UHD lol.
 
SegaSnatcher said:
UHD is doing way better than Laserdisc ever did. It isn't going anywhere anytime soon for the boutique market. You can still make a business selling physical releases even if its not as popular as previous formats.

I'm saying for people who want the best UHD Blu-ray is still an option with many new titles still being released. I just bought Robocop 2 for UHD lol.
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I hear you... but I don't know why you do it that way. You can get the digital version of those movies too. And they are identical to the physical version. I am not talking about streaming here.
 
It still wont help because they never send out a complete game anymore once it goes GOLD. They rely on last-minute 200GB mandatory update day one to be installed. They wont have that stuff ready just because they have bigger storage
 
Cracking Up Lol GIF by HULU
 
Capacity of physical media has not been a bottleneck for a long time.

The issue with optical media is the read/write data transfer rates. Post-PS2 era, the seek times for optical media became so prohibitive that the consoles started downloading everything off the disk onto the HDD. And now even the HDD read speeds are too slow, that we've moved to SSD and custom I/O interfaces to maximize bandwidth and minimize latency between the execution cores and the mass storage device.

The only way physical media comes back in a big way is if some miraculous solid state media with ridiculous data transfer rates emerges. That's not likely to happen.

If anything, the more likely technology to take-over from the mass storage device's function will be cloud storage. As internet speeds get faster and faster, it becomes possible to stream data on-demand right from the cloud, with only a small pool of local storage needed for buffering data.

We're basically already there with cloud streaming of games, but what I'm proposing differs slightly, in that the games still run on your local HW. It's just that the game install is located in the cloud and streamed from the cloud as needed. Meaning that there's no need to ever worry about local HDD/SSD capacity any more, because all your games are stored in the cloud.

If Sony offered this as a pack-in to the highest tier PS+ service, I think it would more than make-up for the value proposition and would entice way more PS gamers to subscribe.
 
impressive storage space. read write speeds must be shit, the internet better have faster speeds.wonder what the main use of this would be?
Season 9 Nbc GIF by The Office
 
Mr.Phoenix said:
No new disc can change storage... the problem with storage media is not that we need new formats that can hold more data, its that there is a better way to distribute what we typically use these media for that cuts any physical format out of the equation.

And that is the internet, and speeds are getting faster and faster every year. You know a tech is going out the window when in the time it would take you to o to a store, pick it up, get back home and put it in your player/console (or for it to be delivered to you)... someone else would have already downloaded whatever and starting consuming. Outside sheer stubbornness, there is no reason for anything to be distributed via optical media anymore.
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Sure and then when the servers go down you lose what you paid for…
Theres nothing stubborn about preferring physical media despite what naysayers may say
 
It's cool that they can do these big numbers and it gets attention. But they should scale it way back to get their foot in the door. A TeraByte or two would be a revolution in optical media; they could scale it back up later.

Quarter the density, put 20% aside for error correction/coding, do just 5 layers, concentrate on read speed, manufacture/stamping capabilities, playback devices and cost. If they can do just 2TB @ 2Gb/s read (you can run multiple lasers if necessary), it'd be a major step up and a good candidate for a "final physical media format" for the premium/enthusiast space as well as having industry applications. Not everything has to be mainstream, markets just need to be addressed at the appropriate premium.
 
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It might change things for data centers, which has got to be the primary use case anyway... which in turn makes it important for cloud gaming, I guess. Obviously no one is going to be hand-loading a disc into a console when a single fingerprint smudge could make GB of data unreadable.

Really cool technology though, especially how they use multiple lasers to make etchings that are smaller than the actual wavelength of light. Could also become important if something like holographic/light field recording ever takes off (kind of assuming that high resolution light field images would require a significant increase in storage compared to 2D or even traditional 3D images, but I really don't know, lol).
 
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Discs for modern consoles are just used to store install files, which install games to the internal memory of the console. I think it's more likely consoles go fully digital instead of adopting a new physical disc format. New tech is expensive. And as soon as gamers don't revolt over it, digital-only is the future. It already happened years ago on Steam anyway.
 
We need optical media external disk drives for legacy gaming only…

Moving forward, simply a small digital card or USBC drive (~4MB) that holds the game license is all that's required. Optical media drives are too bulky.

Trust me, this is the way.
 
old-parts said:
What's needed is a new physical format not like SD cards or the game carts Nintendo uses, not just for games but for movies/shows etc, where the reader is built into your TV and everything else, it might stave off the decline of physical media as its optical that is one of the reasons why its failing from popularity.
Click to expand...

I always wished that physical media could have migrated to something that was itself a physical keepsake, especially as discs started to die. Something cool to own which would also be an installation medium or key for playing the game.

For instance, if Amiibos could store whole games instead of just a little code, your library of games for a platform would also be toys or shelf graphics. (This could already be done if they had a USB keydrive hidden in them, but that's kind of a tacky and clunky solution.) Or when the tech of holographic storage was first pitched, I imagined how cool it would be if games came as collectible cubes. (They did prototype the glass disc below, but that's just another disc and wouldn't be as fun on a shelf... they're also impossibly impractical in speed and storage size, but hey, they look pretty.)

_8JB9259.0.0.1455643719.jpg


Obviously, there's not much practicality to the idea (and it'd be one more expensive thing for your kids to lose...), but given that physical media already is largely a minority market for those concerned about having something to look at and trade around and keep for posterity, I feel like a more displayable product would be the way to go if it somehow could make sense.
 
sigmaZ said:
LOL Analog is over. Move on.
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Perhaps, but it's taking a lot of the market with it. Music has so much trouble selling without a thing to own (albeit music also devalued itself with the MP3 rips and free streaming,) and the movie and TV industries are struggling to grow after embracing streaming as its future (again, with a huge devaluation from trying to give everything away for just a small monthly fee.)

Physical may still ultimately be over and there's nothing that can be done about it (the vinyl trend in music gets buzzed about but still only makes peanuts in the grand scheme of the business,) but it does seem weird to assume we have just reached the final stage of how entertain products will ever be sold. Going backwards to new forms of CDs is not going to be the answer, but the market will always be driving for solutions to getting your money.
 
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