I'm sure most of you know about this, but for those who don't:
http://www.osnews.com/features/11.99/flourescent.html

This is absolutely incredible!!

DiGNAN

Just imagine what this could mean for the empeg! Laptop hard drives (depending on compatability) with this kind of technology would make storage capacity on the empeg a non-issue!!

DiGNAN

hehe


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Colin Cordner is a suspected human (of sorts) who's rarified version of reality (such as it is) has sometimes been known to coincide with our own (for the most part). On those rare occasions when it does, he is most often found at his day job at Fall's Edge, or else moonlighting at The High-Performance PC Guide.

I'm pretty amazed by that storage capacity for a single disc. (My grandkids will wonder how we ever got along with only 1.4 terabyte discs though). Seems like when we start dealing with bigger numbers like that there should be a focus on increasing the sustained transfer rate too. Seems transfer rate is not increasing at the same rate as capacity. However, capacity seems a little more important for most people that speed. Transfer speed doesn't matter for music files like the empeg uses but certainly for HDTV video storage like they mentioned. Isn't HDTV something like 19.2 Mbps? They mentioned 1 GBps read transfers but I wonder what write speeds would be like?

Alex Lear

Who cares? as long as it's faster than what we have now it doesn't really matter, does it?

DiGNAN

You do have a point. However, you eventually have a huge storage space but cannot access it as fast as you would like. As an exagerated example, the internet is a huge storage space. However, anyone still using a modem knows its not reasonable to access some services through a modem. My point is, as capacity increases, the size and type of files we use (like multimedia) increases. The transfer rate needs to accomidate it. In the example of the internet, usually new services offered are controlled by if people can access them fast enough.

Alex Lear

They mentioned 1 GBps read transfers but I wonder what write speeds would be like?

When we're talking about terabytes of storage, the write speeds become irrelevant. You and I are not going to be generating terabytes of information that has to be stored... all we need to do is be able to read those terabytes of information, and 1 GBps would be more than enough for any current use, or even any near-future use.

As to how the terabytes of information would be installed on the disk... it wouldn't be written byte by byte like a floppy drive. More likely it would be stamped (or whatever the flourescent equivalent of stamping is :-) analagous to the way a CD is produced.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

"You and I are not going to be generating terabytes of information that has to be stored..."

I'm afraid history will contradict you. Back when diskettes ruled the earth, people said things like,

"You and I are not going to be generating gigabytes of information that has to be stored..." :)

Believe me, I completely understand where you are coming from because I have no idea what I would store that would require that much space.....yet! When I bought a 13 GB hard drive I thought there was no way to fill it up but these days I'm constantly full. I'm sure there will be a time when a terabyte may not seem like as much as you once thought.

Alex Lear

It would make the empeg obsolete. Without question.

Calvin

Just think of Bill Gates new windows-version: Doors 2010 (He thinks in bigger dimensions then). You'll need 1 GB for the Boot-portion, the system itself will need a minimum of 50 GB disk space and 1GB Memory....

Then you'll have to install a Quark Xpress 6.3 which will need another 40 GB and a Photoshop 7 with 80 GB and so on and on...

What about the good old Dos with everything on a single 1.44 MB - diskette...


TeeMcBee

1Gig drive/ 1Gig Memory? Isn't that the current requirements for MS Office (assuming you don't install any of the alternative Paper Clips)?

I said 1 GB for the boot portion - what I meant was - the stuff like msdos.sys, io.sys, ntldr, just the things that are needed to load the windows... aaahhhh .... doors...

OK - mybe I'll have to upgrade my memory from 1GB to - 32 GB ...

TeeMcBee

Ahhh, you should be fine as long as you don't want to run Doors2000.

Erm, why? It's a storage medium, you still need something to work with the data and present a UI!

Rob

It would make the empeg obsolete. Without question

You've gotta think that if this technology goes somewhere, they'll definitely be putting hard drives based on it into laptops. If the empeg could read these drives (which it presumeably could if they were backwards compatable), a simple software upgrade could do it.

Of course, I don't think we have much to worry about. This type of storage will probably not be readily available or in an accessible price range until the Mark III comes out


And about the size. Just remember that it goes the other way too. I remember when I had a 500 MB hard drive and my dad said I couldn't put whole songs from CD's onto the computer because half the space would be taken up. Now look what we've done. We've made audio files 10 times smaller, and we have bigger spaces to put them in.

DiGNAN

I think you better make it at least 64 GB of memory so you can run something besides just the O/S :)

Laura

I live to launch.

The empeg was put together because you can't put 700, or even 700,000 hours of music on a CD. If this technology comes out, and you can store the capacities they are talking about... then never-mind mp3, because people will be able to burn their entire collections onto 1 CD without any lossy compression at all. All it would take is a CD player to play these things. The empeg is there to address limitations of CDs, CD changers and the like. I seem to recall that while manufacturers can come out with MP3 playing head units, it is still limited by the number of mp3s you can fit on a CD, and even then, you still need to swap cds. and even then, you have to wrangle with music quality issues. So basically, if you can store all the music ever recorded for the last 100 years on 6 of these cds, then why would anyone need to bother with ripping, encoding, emploding, etc? just put a 6 cd magazine and that is it.

it would probably cause an interesting shift in the music industry as well, if all the music ever publishable can be put on a handful of CDs -- music would have to switch to a subscription model where you can get these uber collections for free, and you can purchase the music unlock code from a music store and punch them into the head unit to make stuff available.

Calvin

You're not looking far ahead enough. A jump in presumedly cheap storage technology like this will blow away any need for an empeg. If you can store enough music on ONE of these super-CDs to play continuously for one year? then what? Since the basis is on CD technology, what if the head units to play these cost $200 each? What then? What if you don't need to use lossy compression?

If >1Ghz technologies miraculously appeared in the DOS days, or even the C64 days, what would you do with it? Run DOS much much faster? Make the 1541 disk drive run faster?

Anyway, this is all speculation, but to me, a CD technology like this won't be out for years and years, and even longer based on the sorts of committee red tape that spawned DVD and writable DVD formats --- but when it does I think it will relegate the empeg as it is today into some dark corner somewhere.

Calvin >;)

If you have 100,000 songs on a disk, you're going to need a "super-empeg-turbo" to provide a good enough UI to access those!

You seem to have got the idea that the empeg is an MP3 player - understandable at the moment - but we've always refered to it as a digital audio player. I doubt MP3 will be popular for more than a couple more years, but we plan to be right there with whatever is the latest technology.

If that technology happens to be lossless, so much the better. The technology in the car player is all about playlists and caching, not any particular file format.

Rob

I think you're missing something here. I believe that in addition to the fact that they are cheaper, many people buy the CDROM-based units because they can still easily play their CD's without another head unit or additional portable device.

It appears that while DVD devices can read normal CD's, this techonlogy doesn't use the same type of laser, and therefore might not be able to read normal CD's.

I don't believe that an artist will want to put more than 14-17 songs on a CD. I can point out several lenghtly albums that get a bit tiring by the end of a listen. There's just so much good song writing that a group can do for one album.

I don't know if you read my post well enough. I was talking about disc drives based on this technology. What this stuff is is simply storage in the 3rd dimension, and this is the way we are headed in the future. Who knows, maybe the empeg will be able to use this stuff some day.

All this is really moot, because by the time this stuff becomes affordable, the empeg will be obsolete anyway. This stuff won't do that to it.

DiGNAN

OK, Calvin...

You've got your Flourescent Disk Player with 3,000 hours of uncompressed music on it -- every song you've ever heard, or think you might ever want to hear.

That's going to be about 60,000 songs.

Please play for me "Red Barchetta" by Rush. While you're rummaging around through 60,000 songs trying to find it, I'll just go home and listen to my own copy of it.

As the guys@empeg have said, the hardware is not the most important thing about the empeg. Any deep-pocket electronics company (Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, etc.) could knock out an empeg clone in a few weeks or months. But it wouldn't have the functionality required to deal with such a large amount of music without the UI to make it accessible. By the time you add that to your FDP, you've got yourself another empeg. And a good workable UI like emplode is not a quick and easy project -- just ask Mike Crowe! I'll bet that there are several man-years in the empeg software to date, and it still isn't done. And this kind of software development is pretty resistant to being expedited by throwing large sums of money at it. (Bill Gates -- are you listening?)

If this Flourescent Disk technology takes off, you can bet there will be upgrades offered for existing empegs, or possibly it will be the impetus for the Empeg Mark III.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

You guys are all forgetting that this fluorescent stuff is read-only.

Even dual-layer DVDs have to be mass-stamped. I don't think there's even a such thing as a DVD burner that will do dual-layer discs. As I understand it, the layers have to be mastered separately.

Sure, there are lots of read-write-capabale, non-winchester storage technolgies on the horizon that'll blow away hard disks. These will all use some kind of 3D storage technology, too. But the description of the fluorescent technology makes it sound like a read-write option isn't in the cards for it.

I could be wrong, of course. They've surprised us before. Like that thing with the scotch tape rolls. I still laugh about that one...

Personally, I want to see Molecular Electronics up and working. All the big players (such as IBM) have divisions working on it. Give it 5-10 years, and we'll be able to fit ten thousand empegs into a wrist watch. But like Rob said, someone's still gotta write the UI...

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Tony Fabris

A big CD (and currently, the technology is only worm - you can't write anything back to it) is all well and good - but if it's that big, why bother making it removable at all? I mean, it'll get loaded once and left...

Well before this happens you'll be using an empeg descendant to play your music from a central store somewhere on internet - via bluetooth and your 3G mobile phone. Your music lives somewhere on internet, and you can get it anywhere. Rent a car, it finds your cellphone & ID and carries on playing where you left off on another continent...

Hugo

I'm pretty sure that there will be an empeg (or descendant thereof) about in the future. We've got lots of ideas which are slightly too outlandish for current tech, but you can bet we'll always be working on the cute "must-have" sutff ;)

Hugo

Are there any other products that you have just on the horizon after the empeg?


Alex Lear

However, if they start making really smart toasters, I will still buy an empeg and maybe even save up for a new toaster. :)

Alex Lear

Hmmm... a Talkie Toaster? Two Red Dwarf references in the same day???

(if there's a discount on the Mk3 for owners of a Mk1 & Mk2, I'll still buy one )

Geoff
---- -------
Got one of the first Mark 2 empegs...

...Like that thing with the scotch tape rolls. I still laugh about that one...


??


tanstaafl.



"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

The thing with the scotch tape rolls was as follows:

Somebody figured out how to use a laser to write and read data in three dimensions on the surface of the layers of rolls in some kind of adhesive tape. I can't imagine it being very reliable, but as a science experiment, it was cool.

At least, that's the way I recall it. Anyone have a link to the article?

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Tony Fabris