Titanium Oxide For High-Density Optical Storage 172
Stoobalou and other readers sent along word of research out of Japan, using a new crystal form of titanium oxide for high-density data storage — promising discs that store 1,000 times more data than Blu-ray does today, up to 25 TB. The material transforms from a black-colored metal state that conducts electricity into a brown semiconductor when hit by light, at room temperature. Titanium oxide's market price is about one-hundredth that of the rare element that is currently used in rewritable Blu-ray discs and DVDs. The material is cheap and safe, and is already being used in many products ranging from face powder to white paint. The researchers successfully created the material in particles measuring as small as 5 nanometers in diameter.
Slashdotted, Coral cache link (Score:5, Informative)
Good for archival purposes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are there any projections/estimates related to how stable this media would be when used for long-term archival storage?
Re:Good for archival purposes? (Score:5, Interesting)
I admit having no idea about the answer to that very interesting question but the fact that the surface changes "when hit by light, at room temperature" makes me suspect it doesn't have much chance on that front.
We need a disk that can only be writen by divine intervention at Hell's main furnace, temperature.
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Just put into a light sealed box -- bit like a hard disk today.
Oh, that was too simple a solution? I am sure we can think of something more complicated.
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Just put into a light sealed box -- bit like a hard disk today.
Won't somebody think of the case modders?
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I admit having no idea about the answer to that very interesting question but the fact that the surface changes "when hit by light, at room temperature" makes me suspect it doesn't have much chance on that front.
I bet it would last at least as long as thermal fax paper.
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Oh, you mean read-only?
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Wooooosh.
I was implying that there is no god.
He said that the only way to write in the disk was with "divine intervention at Hell's main furnace". Since there is no god, and there is no hell, it would be impossible to write to the disk.
Re:Good for archival purposes? (Score:5, Funny)
We need a disk that can only be writen by divine intervention at Hell's main furnace, temperature.
That would be "The Matrix: Revolutions" special edition BluRay with extended director's apology voice track.
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That made my day, thanks.
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with extended director's apology voice track.
Brilliant.
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Why would they apologize to you? It was their own story that the Watchowski Brothers ruined, not yours. I could see cutting off an ear in shame or something, but an apology?
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Practical production is a good way off (for that matter, they haven't yet used it for storage in the lab), but since it is electrically but optically writable, it could be de-sensitized by a coating that will permit a laser of a specific wavelength to write it but attenuate normal lighting well below the threshold.
It could also be that another similar substance is found with somewhat better characteristics or that this proves impractical outside of the lab.
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How do you think current optical media works, with magic or something? Fucking retard.
How stable do you think current non factory-written optical media is for long-term archival storage?
Re:Good for archival purposes? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Titanium dioxide itself is ridiculously stable. It's what makes it so safe - we use it to whiten marshmallows for crying out loud.
Are you saying I could store my entire porn collection on marshmallows?
Re:Good for archival purposes? (Score:5, Funny)
Isn't your porn collection sticky enough already?
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Titanium dioxide itself is ridiculously stable. It's what makes it so safe - we use it to whiten marshmallows for crying out loud.
Are you saying I could store my entire porn collection on marshmallows?
Not with me around. Mmmm forbidden marshmallows.
Re:Good for archival purposes? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm off to buy some steel wool for my brain scrubbing, now.
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If the cops come round cos of all your porn, you could just eat the evidence!
Agggh..
The sticky porn collection post turned every other one in the branch into a disgusting, revolting joke.
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It makes them all 10x funnier, while at the same time creating a strong urge to take a shower and was your mouth out with soap.
Re:Good for archival purposes? (Score:5, Funny)
Are there any projections/estimates related to how stable this media would be when used for long-term archival storage?
If the state changes in light, then there are some rules to follow:
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The one day I don't have mod points...
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"Are there any projections/estimates related to how stable this media would be when used for long-term archival storage?"
Not very long. Most titanium oxides of any sort are semi-unstable and degrade fairly easily, which is why they're used en-masse in sunscreen - it works for a short period of time but it degrades quickly under visible and UV wavelength light, requiring you to re-apply it.
I'd bet exposing one of these discs to normal light for any lengthy amount of time would render the disc unusable.
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Most titanium oxides of any sort are semi-unstable and degrade fairly easily
Really? My toothpaste doesn't seem to degrade all that quickly.
In fact, titanium dioxide is chemically stable. What you're confused about is the fact that it is photcatalytic. That's what makes it attractive as a sunscreen. It uses up the UV energy by combining other elements in the sunscreen. That's why it fades, it runs out of stuff to catalyze, the titanium doesn't degrade in any way. If it did, 3 year old marshmallows wouldn't be white. Trust me, they are.
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My hard disks are all sealed very safely inside metal boxes. Their delicate little mechanical/magnetic workings are never exposed to the outside world in normal operating conditions. If I were to accidentally smash one open, I'd probably write it off as a goner.
Why should light ever reach the platters of this drive in an archival situation?
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What they need to do is invent different kinds of light. Obviously it could be confusing, so we'd have to give them different names. Perhaps we could come up with a scheme using Tolkien characters, vegetables, or even colours.
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Yeah yeah! Instead of being just stuck with the one wavelength of modern light, they could sort of, stretch it or squish it, then everything changes!
I propose we call this new light "Ploo" just to torment future generations.
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It's going to be perfect for cloud storage, then?
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It all sounds like pie in the sky stuff to me.
Even if it isn't, until there is a device that can read/write to this disc at much faster speeds than current optical media, I can't imagine this ever taking off. And if it could reach those speeds, it probably could literally take off!
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The limiting factor is the disk spin rate, they simply cannot spin much faster than they do now without beginning to wobble, which very quickly shatters the disc.
The answer is packing the data in tighter.
This is why DVD's read an order of magnitude faster than CD's, and Blue Ray is an order of magnitude faster than DVD. They all take about the same amount of time to dump data to disk.
Increase the data density, increase the speed. A disk with much data packed inside will take about as long to rip as a CD,
Finally! (Score:3, Funny)
I have been waiting for affordable removable storage in the TB size range for many years now! There's a giant p0^H^H document library waiting on my NAS to be archived ...
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In the Cloud!
Won't see 1000x for a few years. (Score:4, Interesting)
Interestingly in CD-ROM's heyday it wasn't uncommon for a PC to have a smaller hard drive than the amount of data that would fit on a CD-ROM. About the time DVD-ROMs were out I suppose hard drives were only a little larger. Blue-rays were fraction the size of a hard drive when the format spec was finalized (2005). Now hard drives are 20-40x larger than a blu-ray disc.
Carelessly extrapolating from the trend I predict we might not see this technology in widespread use until a common consumer hard drive is past the 25TB mark.
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I see your crazy personal anecdote and raise you mine: The first PC I owned had a CDROM had 4Mb RAM and a 40Mb hard disk (we paid nearly the price of the computer again to upgrade from its original 1Mb with 20Mb disk), before we then changed to another PC to upgrade. It was a 1x CD-ROM too. And an ISA Sound-Blaster was cabled into it. Weirdest bit? I still have the CDROM drive and it still works.
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I have a 286 @ 20MHz with 1 MB of RAM, a 40 MB hard drive, SB 16, EGA, both 3.5" HD (1.44 MB) and 5.25" HD (1.2 MB) and a 2x CDROM. The whole system still works. Ken's Labyrinth rocks!
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Tandy Model 12 with a box of 8" floppies. I demo the NASA solar panel calculation software on it about once a quarter to students.
And I got a Tandy Model I in the basement somewhere.. I need to get this dinosaur crap out of here....
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To the eBaymobile!
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Well, I have a c64c and an Atari 800 XL that both work, but they don't have CD-ROM drives. The Atari doesn't have a floppy or tape drive that works, but the system and the cartridge slot do.
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Packard Bell 8088. 20MB HDD, 1x CD-ROM. 512KB RAM. CGA. 2400 baud modem. PC Speaker only (except plugging headphones into the CD-ROM.)
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I had One of these [wikipedia.org]. The old XT/8088. 4.77MHz, up to 640KB RAM (ought to be enough for anybody right? OK I only had 128 KB), 10 MB HDD. I think we had a CGA card in it...
It was working until somebody threw it away while I was at Uni. Oldest I have now is a AMD K6-2 333MHz PC... running on a PC-Chips board of all things... and yes... still works.
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I have a handful of pebbles. Your move.
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386DX40 with 4Mbyte of RAM, 170MB HD, Mitsumi FX-001D CD-Rom drive.
Just because you were a late adopter of CD-Roms doesnt mean everybody was.
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Better than 3D:
With the labor market, we could just hire people to come and act out the movie for us. Call it "RealLife-O-Vision".
I patented the idea, in case you're wondering.
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With the labor market, we could just hire people to come and act out the movie for us. Call it "RealLife-O-Vision".
It will never work out. The special effects explosions in action movies are hell on the furniture.
If it isn't fire, it's ice (Score:2)
It will never work out. The special effects explosions in action movies are hell on the furniture.
Worse still were the neighbors complaints after the snow scenes in Lord of the Rings when the Fellowship tried to cross the misty mountains before turning back and heading to Moria. Seems the melt required for the next scene seeped through the floorboards and flooded their flat (and the five floors beneath them). Oh well, still damn good entertainment.
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we could just hire people to come and act out the movie for us.
It will never work out. The special effects explosions in action movies are hell on the furniture.
Worse still were the neighbors complaints after the snow scenes
My dear sirs. If I may raise a point in favour of this new technology:
Porn.
That will be all.
Prior art on Broadway (Score:2)
With the labor market, we could just hire people to come and act out the movie for us. Call it "RealLife-O-Vision".
I patented the idea, in case you're wondering.
But maybe they've got prior art [wikipedia.org]
On Broadway (On Broadway) [wikipedia.org]
Something's not right (Score:3, Informative)
Titanium oxide isn't used for pigments - titanium dioxide is.
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Titanium dioxide is a type of titanium oxide, specifically titanium (IV) oxide.
Titanium monoxide is also a type of titanium oxide.
Dititanium trioxide is also a type of titanium oxide.
Seriously, what's with the quibbling over semantics, particularly when you don't understand the terms you are using?
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The difference between something that's perfectly harmless and something that will cleave DNA.
Light? Daylight will ruin your data? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Many Slashdotters would not be afraid to use data storage vulnerable to sunlight.
20 years away? (Score:3, Insightful)
Buh. After reading about terrabit cube storage in 1994 http://bit.ly/cf4ufr [bit.ly] [new scientist], I didn't upgrade my 3.5" floppies for years ... now I'm old, cynical about every article like this and my removable storage devices don't go past 32GB.
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You could get a USB or eSATA hard drive. That's sort of removable. I mean, it's external and all, but you can disconnect it and move it to another system without opening the case. That's what "removable" really means, not necessarily that it slides into a slot or sits on a tray.
External power supply (Score:2)
You could get a USB or eSATA hard drive. That's sort of removable.
Something that "slides into a slot or sits on a tray" doesn't need an extra power brick. Nor does a USB flash drive. Many USB or eSATA hard drives, on the other hand...
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The phone [wikipedia.org] on the end of my desk has a dial on it. Even though the old electromechanical switching equipment got kicked out of central offices decades ago, the new electronic switches still support pulse dialing. (The robotic "press 1 for ... " doesn't however).
I don't think many CDs or CD players will work that long after they're obsoleted, though. The phones from the ma Bell days were built like brick shithouses, because they were leased. You could bludgeon an intruder with one, and you would still be able
In other news (Score:2)
Sony announces technology expo next week for new, even better than Blu-Ray format set for release in 5 years, throwing everyone in limbo wondering if they should stick with DVDs, buy into Blu-Ray and pray for backwards compatibility, or not buy a movie for 5 years. Monster cable to demo new cable technology, provides everyone with magnifying glasses so they can experience the difference.
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Sony... MiniDisc, UMD, Memory Stick, Memory Stick derivatives, BetaMax, Hi-8, Digital8 MicroMV, DVCAM, HiFD, Elcaset, Super Audio CD...
I'd put little stock into a Sony format announcement until I see the specs, the marketing, the cross-licensing, and the support from other vendors.
They were instrumental in development or support for many successful open standards, like the 3.5" HD floppy, the original music CD, HDV, or compact cassette. However, just as often as supporting the format everyone is using, they
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Sony... MiniDisc, UMD, Memory Stick, Memory Stick derivatives, BetaMax, Hi-8, Digital8 MicroMV, DVCAM, HiFD, Elcaset, Super Audio CD...
MiniDisc found a loyal following among concert tapers, as did Video8 and Video Hi8 among amateur videographers.
They were instrumental in development or support for many successful open standards, like the 3.5" HD floppy, the original music CD, HDV, or compact cassette.
That and PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and Blu-ray Disc. But during the analog camcorder era, were Video8 and Video Hi8 [wikipedia.org] really that much of a failure?
However, just as often as supporting the format everyone is using, they try to push out a format they developed that has little or no support from anyone else.
How does Sony know whether a format will have little or no support before it tries? What was MiniDisc's fatal flaw that kept it from overtaking Compact Cassette, other than perhaps failure to aggressively cut prices on home decks?
One thing missing though: (Score:5, Insightful)
The point.
Why again do we need another slow optical disc medium? The times of those are clearly over.
Until that thing comes out, USB sticks are going to be 25 TB too. And much smaller. And not prone to scratching, sunlight, bending, dust, etc. And for everything else there is HDDs/SSDs.
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Exactly. As another poster noted, when CD-R discs first became available, most hard drives were smaller than 650 megs, so it made sense as a backup medium. Now, the largest commonly available hard drive is 2 terabytes, and backing that up even with Blu-Ray is like backing up a CD-ROM on floppies. In recent years, I've taken to buying hard drives in pairs: one for the working data, and one for the backup. (Yes, I know, but this is adequate for personal use. I'd use RAID arrays in a corporate environment.) Al
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Why again do we need another slow optical disc medium?
Because we currently don't have a removable media that is cheap and large for backup. Blurays are still more expensive then USB HDDs and DVD+R per gigabyte and even if they would be cheap, they just are not large enough to backup even a single partition of your 1TB drive. DVD+R are still the cheapest storage available, but they are so small, that they are just useless for backup.
So cheap and big would be something new, especially when they manage get anywhere near the 25TB mark. As that's a mark that even H
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It's called "an external hard drive". Plug it in via USB. One terabyte of space for a hundred bucks (probably less, now.)
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Not with the monthly caps pushed by countless ISPs around the world.
And don't say "switch ISP" because a lot of people don't have any options and before long all ISPs are going to implement caps anyway.
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Partially condensed water vapour is not actually a good storage medium for digital information.
All these data centers (the "cloud" as you call it), actually contain lots and lots of servers with, get this, hot-swappable removable storage.
Safe... Really? (Score:2, Informative)
Really? Several articles have linked TiO2 to cancer [ccohs.ca]. Yeah, real safe.
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Well, unless they make that center hole a lot bigger, I won't be rubbing that disc on my skin anywhere. So I'm not really worried.
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Really? Several articles have linked TiO2 to cancer [ccohs.ca]. Yeah, real safe.
Ahh, so that's why everyone is getting mouth cancer! It's all the TiO2 in every white, opaque toothpaste on the market!
What's that? Mouth cancer is extremely rare? Not linked at all to TiO2?
Huh.
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Actually, we use Titanium Oxide for cleaving DNA all the time in bacterial genome recombination.
Documented troll, my ass.
Signed,
Director of Research, EcogroLED USA.
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You're making ultra-energy-efficient lights for growing plants indoors?
SWAT team busting down your office door in 3,2,1...
Great! Lifelong supply of Pron on one disk! (Score:2)
Actually several lifetimes worth. One disk that can be passed from generation to generation!
Seriously, who needs 25TB with a single access channel and a single point of failure?
Rare element in DVD/BRD (Score:2)
What rare element? I thought that BRDs and DVDs used aluminum, just like CDs did.
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Titanium dioxide? (Score:5, Informative)
Most likely, TFA should have referred to Titanium dioxide, as this is also a semiconductor in crystalline state.
Re:Titanium dioxide? (Score:5, Informative)
"This is the first demonstration of a photorewritable phenomenon at room temperature in a metal oxide. -Ti3O5 satisfies the operation conditions required for a practical optical storage system (operational temperature, writing data by short wavelength light and the appropriate threshold laser power)."
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plus it seems to be fragile allowing the discs to degrade, This utterly delights the Media industry as the discs will slowly die giving them another money fountain.
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But I thought titanium dioxide was white?
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Titanium dioxide, also known as titanium(IV) oxide or titania, is the naturally occurring oxide of titanium, chemical formula TiO2.
Any chemical made entirely of titanium and oxygen can be correctly called titanium oxide, dumbass. Yes, titanium dioxide is more specific, but titanium dioxide is just a form of titanium oxide. I could see you correcting the article if they had called it titanium monoxide or dititanium trioxide, but titanium oxide? That's what it is.
It's no different than iron oxide (which has like, 4 or 5 forms).
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Of all the conspiracy theories this one confuses me the most.
It displays a fundamental lack of understanding in both physics and meteorology. High altitude chemical spray is quite simply the the worst possible, if not impossible, way to disperse fluids. First off the winds aloft are different at 3K feet. At 10K-30K they are significantly stronger and can be in a different direction than on the group. Plus there the problem that the fluid would likely evaporate before reaching the ground. Another proble
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Not to mention the fact that neither titanium oxide nor aluminum oxide are toxic in any way. The former is what makes toothpaste white, the latter are more commonly known as rubies, sapphires, or the abrasive in sandpaper.
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Obviously the government couldn't be behind it, but What about the Boy Sprouts or the Gnomes of Zurich?
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Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter!
Please send me your name, mailing address, bank routing and account numbers, recent vaccination history, the name of the song stuck in your head (and whether it's the 1983 or 2005 remake), and current GPS coordinates so I can sign up.
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Damn, he said "CHEMTRAIL" not "CHEMICAL". Silly me. Guess I have a knee-jerk reaction to all the tin-foil hat guys.
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You joke, but the Japanese are actually working on a video format with resolution just like the one you mentioned - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Hi-Vision [wikipedia.org]
Disks at which TFA hints might come handy for that...
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Which will never become popular enough to be used.
It took over 12 years to get TV station to buy HD gear, and many still dont have all their gear HD yet. It's gonna take 30 years for that one to get past the cheap bastards that run the TV and media outlets.
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Considering that Japan has HD TV for alsmot 2 decades (they had an analogue system; decently succesful, it seems), it might be only 20 years?
Probably largely pointless anyway...
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NOOooooo!
I just rebuilt my favorite movies libraries in Blu-Ray!
This is the normal process of 'planned obsolescence' in the media delivery industry. You'll be upgrading your entire collection once or twice every 5 - 10 years (at least the parts of it that are re-released on the new format).
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This is the normal process of 'planned obsolescence' in the media delivery industry.
Funny, people used to call it "progress".
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:)
Hm, OTOH very small subset of anime could look...stunning. Imagine moving painting, essentially.
"Consumers re-buy their movie libraries" (Score:2)
I'm not so sure about that step...not next time around.
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