Alliance touts holographic disc 'revolution'

Forget HD DVD, forget Blu-ray Disc, the future is the HVD - the Holographic Versatile Disc.

So claim six Japanese companies, led by Optware and including Fuji Photo Film, who last week launched the HVD Alliance to promote the "revolutionary" format to hardware manufacturers, disc pressing firms, content providers and end-users.

The concept behind holographic storage isn't new. Just as a visual hologram encode 3D objects as light interference patterns, HVD uses the same principle to store data at densities far in excess of today's optical media.

According to Optware, an HVD is the same size as a single-layer DVD but holds 200 times as much data - more than 1TB. The information can be read at over 1Gbps - 40 times the speed of DVD, the company claimed. Optware is backed by Intel's venture capital operation.

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Date - 07 February 2005