Terabyte Optical Storage Disks the Size of a DVD
Just yesterday, a friend and I were talking about what the replacement for the DVD would be like. I was surprised to read about this possible new replacement in the Winnipeg Free Press. This website outlines the new technology, Multiplexed Optical Data Storage (MODS), in greater detail.

"September 26, 2004
Physicists at Imperial College London are developing a new optical disk with so much storage capacity that every episode of The Simpsons made could fit on just one. Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Data Storage Conference 2004 in Taiwan today, Dr Peter Török, Lecturer in Photonics in the Department of Physics, will describe a new method for potentially encoding and storing up to one Terabyte (1,000 Gigabytes) of data, or 472 hours of film, on one optical disk the size of a CD or DVD. "

"Under magnification the surface of CDs and DVDs appear as tiny grooves filled with pits and land regions. These pits and land regions represent information encoded into a digital format as a series of ones and noughts. When read back, CDs and DVDs carry one bit per pit, but the Imperial researchers have come up with a way to encode and retrieve up to ten times the amount of information from one pit. "

And, here's how it's done.

"Unlike existing optical disks, MODS disks have asymmetric pits, each containing a 'step' sunk within at one of 332 different angles, which encode the information. The Imperial researchers developed a method that can be used to make a precise measurement of the pit orientation that reflects the light back. A different physical phenomenon is used to achieve the additional gain."

From CNET.com:

"Blu-ray discs--currently available only in Japan, with European products expected in 2005--can store up to 25GB per layer and can have two layers. MODS will have 250GB in each of up to four layers. "

From the Winnipeg Free press article, New super disc may replace DVD.

" More than $9 billion US worth of writeable DVD equipment and writeable discs were sold last year worldwide, not including global sales of movies on DVD and read-only DVD players. "