Blu-ray, HD DVD? forget it...

[MrT]

It appears that all the fuss related to the battle between Blu-ray and HD DVD was all for nothing. Why do we need their storage capacity, when other formats have just been developed and promise to boast the storage capacity up to 50TB (terabytes - 50,000GB) or more? What do you say about that?

A Harvard Medical School team of researchers have developed a special technique that makes use of proteins, previously applied onto a common DVD to increase the storage capacity. Professor V Renugopalakrishnan, one of the researchers, said that, in this moment, a protein-coated disk could store up to 20 times more than a just released Blu-ray support.

“Using modified proteins from the membrane of a salt marsh microbe called halobaterium slinarum -- also known as bateriorhodopsin (bR). The proteins store data by capturing light in a very natural way. Light is converted to chemical energy, a series of intermediate molecules that are unique. The molecules then return to a "ground state", which is a chemical change in which they are all the same. Professor Renugopalakrishnan was able to modify the protein DNA so that the unique state, or "intermediate" stage, would last for years instead of breaking down in a matter of hours. With this modification, any unique intermediate state could be considered a 1 while a "ground state" could be considered a 0,” writes Daily Tech.

On the other hand, we have the Hyper CD-ROM, a tridimensional multilayer optical memory, a glass disk with storing capacity of over 10,000 Gigabytes (GB), which can be manufactured by using commercial equipment. More precisely, the user can store on a disk with a 120 mm diameter and 10 mm thick more than 1 PB (1,000,000 GB).

The Hyper CD-ROM is, according to the definition given by the inventor, an “optic tridimensional multilevel memory” so it can store data in over 10,000 different levels inside a glass disk 10 mm high and 120 mm in diameter. “The most attractive aspect is that the support for storage (i.e. fluorescent photosensitive glass) is a very stable in time medium (information can be read during all the life of the glass - estimated to at least 5,000 years),” writes Dntb.

So, tell me why do we need Blu-ray or HD DVD when we have better alternatives?

source:

[Mangix]

i read on Slashdot that it was "bacteria" and not a protein. but even though he's invented this cool thing, you're gonna need to wait at least a couple of years before using it . as for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, it's all about the $$$