Japan's Optware advances holographic disc storage

IDG News Service - Although Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD technologies have yet to reach the mainstream, a Japanese company said it has made progress toward a more advanced holographic technology that may one day replace them. Optware Corp. said today that it has achieved the world's first reliable recording and playback of digital movies on a transparent holographic recording disc.
Optware plans to commercialize the technology in the first quarter of 2006, offering reader/writer players and 200GB Holographic Versatile Discs (HVD) for enterprise users. Much less expensive consumer versions could be on the market as soon as 2007, said Yasuhide Kageyama, manager of business development and marketing at Yokohama-based Optware.
The company has developed a so-called Collinear Holographic Data Storage System that uses a green 532-nanometer laser to read holographic data on a 12-centimeter disc. In the system, light from the green laser is split into two beams. Data to be recorded is encoded onto one of the beams while the other beam is used as a reference. The two beams interfere with each other inside the disc's recording layer, and in this way data is stored.
Below the recording layer is a preformatted layer that stores servo data and is read by a second, red laser. This enables accurate tracking of the disc. Between the data layer and servo layer is a mirror layer, which reflects the green laser but is transparent to the red laser. It's this mirror layer that is the key to HVD, said Kageyama, because it stops the scattering of light within the disc that could cause noise and deteriorate the signal quality.
The company is initially planning to use the technology for enterprise applications. Drives for this market will cost about $20,000 and will initially use 200GB HVDs, with a target cost of about $100 per disc.
Drives for home users will cost about $2,700, about the same as commercially available Blu-ray Disc players cost now. While Kageyama didn't have a cost estimate of future home-use HVDs, he said that a number of Japanese, European and U.S. companies led by Sony Corp. have expressed interest in the technology. Last month, Sony ordered collinear technology equipment from Optware to research and develop holographic storage technology and disc manufacturing systems using blue lasers, according to an Optware statement.
"Sony and some major Japanese electronics companies are studying holographic storage to replace HD-DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. Sony wants to develop next-next-generation storage technologies, and we can say that our collinear solution is getting very popular," Kageyama said.
Future developments of thetechnology could take its capacity up to 1TB of data on 12-centimeter discs the company said.
Optware demonstrated a prototype of the system to investors and other electronics companies in early July, it said. It declined to name the companies that attended the demonstrations. It plans to present technical details of the technology at the COST Action P8 conference in Paris on Sept. 16 and 17.