Holographic media still cart before horse

Can you imagine 800 GB or 1.6 TB storage per disc? It’s a reality! According to this story, price is still a limiting factor - $120 - $150 per disc and ~$24,000 per drive - but remember when Panasonic was the only company to sell a CD burner and the price was in the $20,000 range? Our appetite for more storage will (I predict) drive the price down to consumer levels within five years.

Imagine 60 movies, 240 hours of television programming, 1.6 million high-resolution colour photos, or more than 150 million pages of text – all on a single disc with a shelf life of more than 50 years.

Such capabilities are not gee-wiz fiction, or years down the road.

According to Maxell Canada, they are offered right now by the company’s recently launched holographic storage media disc.

“If you want to store a lot of digital data and want it to last, this is the disc for you,” said Dennis Tuer, national accounts manager at Concord, Ont.–based Maxell Canada.