The first Blu Ray recordable discs are now available for sale. They come in two flavors, a 25 GB and a 50 GB version. There are also BD-R’s and BD-RW’s. The 50GB BD-R’s cost a staggering $50 each, and the RW versions are over $60!

I know this is newly minted technology, and that the price should drop like a stone within the year, but $1 a GB?!? One might as well buy a Raptor drive if you are spending that kind of money.

I remember when DVD drives came out, and along with them CD-R drives. Even back in 1997 the drives and media were never as expensive as these Blu Ray ones are. I hear the drives are over $1000 right now. You would think with the manufacturing technology being as entrenched as it is the cost of making the drives and discs would be only little more than for conventional drives.

I guess the Dogbert marketing geniuses are targeting the “stupid rich” on this one.

In other news you can now buy a 750GB hard drive for a mere $500. The first consumer model using the perpendicular drive storage technique has finally been released. I knew the big drives would be the last to be released since they wanted to squeeze every last cent from other markets. Those other markets being micro drives for portable devices like MP3 players, notebook drives, and high speed drives. By raising the capacities of the significantly more expensive niche product drives first they can maximixe their profits. A 150GB notebook drive seems like a better deal when it is only stacked against a maximum of 500GB in desktop drives.

Now that the 750GB is among us I suppose every manufacturer will release 300GB, 400GB, and 500GB drives using the technology at prices far (eventually) below that of today’s drives. I have been holding off on getting a new 300GB SATA2 drive the last couple of weeks because I know a price drop is imminent.

Hitachi has made a flash animated video about the new perpendicular technology in a kind of schoolhouse rock style. It is quite funny.
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/research/recording_head/pr/PerpendicularAnimation.html

Hey Mega,

It looks like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD may both flop. This is with Maxell announcing a much cheaper and better solution. Holographic storage discs storing 300 GB each may be coming out by the end of this year. Check out these links.

http://www.joystiq.com/2005/11/26/blu-ray-and-hd-dvd-fighting-a-lost-battle-holographic-storage/

http://www.techspot.com/news/19547-maxell-to-unveil-holographic-storage-in-2006.html

There is another new device, the stacked volumetric optical disc (SVOD) array, which is like a very thin DVD sized disc that can be stacked up to 100 high. Each layer is about 92µm and can hold 9.4 GB. Since 92µm is far to thin to make a usable product, the layers are stacked making up to 1TB discs a possibility. A disc of about 2.5 inches thick can be made and still be readable. These discs would cost around $340 each. One can buy multiple hard drives for less $'s per GB, so I hope that is just the early adopter price.