We have certainly seen our fair share of advancements in the world of computers, storage media included. Remember the hum of the floppy disk drive when it handled 3.5” and 5.25” floppies? The later games came on several floppies, and all of those were easy to pirate, too, as there was no such thing as DRM in the past. Having said that, we moved on to CD-ROMs (I remember Rebel Assault then, boy was that heavy on visuals and audio, but it severely lacked in gameplay), and DVDs came onto the scene later on, with Blu-ray discs dominating these days, especially on the PS3 platform. Having said that, is there the possibility of DVDs being given a new lease of life? Perhaps, as scientists have managed to come up with a new type of optical laser that could actually increase the data capacity of a single DVD to hit a whopping one petabyte.
At this point in time, a single-layer DVD can fit approximately 4.7GB of data, so double that amount with a dual-layer DVD. A single-layer Blu-ray would hold around 25GB of data, and it can hold a maximum of four layers, theoretically bringing up the total to 100GB. A team from Swinburne University’s Center for Micro-Photonics came up with a technique which on paper, can increase a DVD’s storage capacity to hit a whopping 1PB, all without having to change the size or shape of the disc, but it does changes to the laser instead. Will such lasers be cheap enough to manufacture and installed in existing machines down the road? Only time will tell.
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