Hitachi to produce 200GB Blu-ray disc in 2009

The HD movie format war aside, there will almost certainly always be a need for a disc medium to backup our computer files with, and Blu-ray has been trying to fill that need since its release. Unlike the other format, Blu-ray burners hit the market before the movie players did, and gave computer users the ability to backup more data than ever before on a 80mm disc. Even if both formats are replaced by downloadable content, there will still be a need for big optical discs to store those movies, and Hitachi plans to offer an 8-layer Blu-ray disc capable of storing 200GB of data. While this seems like a lot today, by the time it hits the market in 2009 it might not seem like much at the rate hard discs capacity is increasing.

[Lord Anubis]

very nice, several HD movies will fit on a 200gig discs.

[FordGTGuy]

You have to be kidding right? You could fit a hell of a lot more then several HD movies on a 200 GB capacity.

[LoydX-mas]

I don't want to pay $160 for a disc. (based on the $20 they charge for one single layer BD-25 disc)

[Robotz Rule]

:O

[P4KY B]

Like back in the mid to late 90's when you could back up your whole PC HD onto a handful of CD's.

[gta_cb]

handfull?... lol sorry but had to say it, 1 of these disks are the same size as my main HDD! thankfully i have a couple extra ;)

[LoveHateTragedy]

That's pretty damn sweet. There are quite a few PS3 devs who are waiting for the 75 and 100 GB discs at the moment (Ted Price even brought it up). The special edition of Stranglehold also presents a cool bonus, which is having both the game and the Hi-def version of Hard Boiled on the same disc. I'm actually hoping more and more 3rd party developers take advantage of Blu-ray in similar ways.

[Hydrolex]

PS3 in the future > Xbox 360

PS3 has the best future.

[FordGTGuy]

BTW better compression = faster loading times in games.

[techie]

How about a game with zero loading - Uncharted

[WilliamRLBaker]

Are we assuming that the 8 layer 200 gig disc will work out of the box with the ps3?
Because alot of early dvd players hard trouble playing dual layer dvd discs.

I've done research into uncharted now deep, The day its zero loading times is the day it comes on hardtype media instead of disc type media...They can throw as much mumbo jumbo as they want at the uncharted dev but i dont believe it will be zero loading like they say.

[DEIx15x8]

WilliamRLBaker is right. This is actually terrible news for the PS3 and actually anybody that has bought a Blu-ray player. It means in 2009 you will have to buy a new one to be able to use these.

[hfaze]

"This is actually terrible news for the PS3 and actually anybody that has bought a Blu-ray player. It means in 2009 you will have to buy a new one to be able to use these."

This is talking about data storage, not movies or gaming. You'll probably start seeing 8 layer BURNERS and BD-ROM's, but I sincerely doubt you'll see stuidos or game companies using this due to the high cost per layer to duplicate discs on multiple layers...

[The_Firestarter]

That's pretty darn impressive! 200GB in only 1 1/2 years? Keep up the great work, Hitachi!

[Vojkan]

I think this is great news, i knew that there were works on 4 layer 100GB blue ray discs but not 200gb. Great, even Kojima said that 50GB is not enough(strange) and it seems Uncharted might also take a lot of GB. They said that demo they showed 4 days ago couldn't fit on DVD. Now go figure how much full game takes.

[Phantom_Lee]

we could see a season of House in 1 disc..,NICE~

[MK_Red]

I dont know about you but I can use that to backup my whole HDD... I hope PS3 cap play those 200gb disks so we can watch everything on PS3.

[nice_cuppa]

great tec for data backups but films wont use this as they make more money from individual units + very high price point means its unatainable to 99.9% of people.( not all bluray players will play a 2,4,8 layer disc)

as for the people spewing guff about games !!!
one of the biggest games (oblivion) is 1 dvd !
the best looking current game (gears of war) is on 1 dvd !

mgs will be a good game but we all know it will be a 20 hour game with alot of cut scenes !
i dont expect even a basic bluray disc to be full of actual playable game data this gen (next 5 years in my eyes) as said game would cost to much time and money to make !

i know there are people who feel the need to hype ps3 as its all they own but me i am a realist ! i will get mgs4 as i did the other 3 but to think there will be 50-70gb of actual gameplay data ( not duplicated) is dumb !

i skip all mgs cutscenes when i can as trying to follow a mgs story is like reading the silmarillion i.e NIGHTMARE ! and the story sucks anyway !
i play mgs for the gameplay and have said since mgs1 that the guy should just make a damb movie and keep the game as a game !)

look at mass effect to see what dvd can do !

[Cartesian3D]

so there isnt BEST LOOKING and HUGE game now.. we want both of them..

high detailed levels ,huge world ,high res textures,faster loadtime...

in Oblivion they use many triks for compressing data (copy paste textures in a big area .. ) ...

anyway many developers Learn to use Bluray after sony first party developers.. and follow them to make better games...

DVD9 is enough for PS2 games...not for next gen graphics..

[gta_cb]

not for this gen?.... maybe not in a year, but ATM things have been going well by using DVD9... although there has been some worry with GTA4... hmmmm maybe your right.

but getting back to the story WOW! would the PS3 support these disk?

[THC PRITCHARD]

The next gta will be Huge!

Gta World with flight simulator etc

[sevenout]

200GB, old and busted.
New hotness, 100TB.

This guy:
http://colossalstorage.net/...

has invented an atomic switch; coupled with holographic-ultraviolet lasers, his disk can store 100TB at a projected (initial) cost of the drive at $750.

[gta_cb]

hmmm maybe something like this in the PS4/5? or maybe Xbox 720/? (whatever is next)? its a hell of alot of space!

[kewlkat007]

Who nees that much space, DEVELOPERS? THis format thing jsut keeps changing and is getting out of hand. That why I laugh at these current formats. They will be outdated in 5 years. Just in time for a new Xbox, I wonder if Sony will be saying "we do not need 200GB for games", since they will have another 5 years to go before they bring out anything new, then MS will be out again.

[artman]

it's gonna take ages to burn 100TB, and the website looks not promising... I think it just still theory. it's not even create the demo product yet.

I'm not even sure what speed we need to burn 1TB. it takes almost 30min to copy 80Gb to HD with firewire 400. (using windows, OS X can transfer file faster)

[hfaze]

Besides, IBM has been working on this since 1997 and STILL can't come up with a commercially viable model... What makes this small fry think he can pull off something that big blue couldn't?

http://www.almaden.ibm.com/...

[gta_cb]

just 1 of these discs are the same size of my main computer HDD! =O

[bootsielon]

Too late by then...

[mcintosh233]

like 4 days to write 200gb onto disk

would be great when things like this materialise

maybe get super hd movies at like 4600*2000

[gta_cb]

ya know wot, i was thinking that earlier lol, man it would be good having the option to have these, but like you said, how long would it take?!

[FordGTGuy]

Every game has loading times whether they are masked by cinematics or not. Compression allows more information to be sent from the disc to the console at one time so you had faster load times.

[hfaze]

And higher CPU/RAM utilization while the compressed data is decompressed... There ARE drawbacks to compression, it's not the holy grail that Microsoft would like you to believe it is...

[Dragonopolis]

Hitachi was supposedly releasing a combo blu-ray /HDD drive for PC/notebooks and some idiot on the net saw it as a 200 gb Blu-ray disc when in fact it was a 4x blu-ray combo with a 200 gb HDD.

I believe several tech sites including digg already blab about this over a week ago.

This story is too little too late