DVD killed the VCR

[kendor]

Kendor,

while I think of it, you might like to know that Muller have a 'Rum & Raisin' fruit corner!!

Rather good too!

Your a top man!

 

[2scoops0406]

Going back to the blu ray stuff, I reckon this is just another industry rip off. Now I don't know what the difficulty in mass producing blue / violet diode lasers is a opposed to the Red /IR variety, but apart from the chemical substate difference, not much I would hazard a guess at. Besides ultraviolet diode lasers have already been produced reliably in the labs, these lase at ~280 Nm as opposed to blu rays propsed 405 Nm. Blu ray is supposed to have a capacity of 27Gb so would an ultraviolet laser have a capacity of 39Gb (?)

Now bring on my Gamma radiation laser DVD which theoretically would have a capacity around the 30 TB, but sadly emitting about 1 million times the amount of enery of a UV laser . I guess if you could make DVD that could survive this kind of pasting, the unit itself would be dead heavy !! Also dead difficult to make a gamma ray laser!

 

[mildmanneredjanitor]

Going back to the blu ray stuff,

Well, if you want to hijack this important 'Rum and Raisin' issue

Now bring on my Gamma radiation laser DVD which theoretically would have a capacity around the 30 TB, but sadly emitting about 1 million times the amount of enery of a UV laser . I guess if you could make DVD that could survive this kind of pasting, the unit itself would be dead heavy !! Also dead difficult to make a gamma ray laser!

WMD - Whopping Multimedia Datastorage

Tony! I've found the culprit!!!

 

[2scoops0406]

Going back to the blu ray stuff,

Well, if you want to hijack this important 'Rum and Raisin' issue

Now bring on my Gamma radiation laser DVD which theoretically would have a capacity around the 30 TB, but sadly emitting about 1 million times the amount of enery of a UV laser . I guess if you could make DVD that could survive this kind of pasting, the unit itself would be dead heavy !! Also dead difficult to make a gamma ray laser!

WMD - Whopping Multimedia Datastorage

Tony! I've found the culprit!!!

I am thinking of Rum and Raisin, or as my dad calls it Bum and Rutter (don't ask). Just think how many mouth watering pictures of said food could be stored with 30 Tb of data, the mid boggles, well ok, about 120,000,000 250K JPEG's, enough even to satisfy even the most ardent rum 'n' raisin fan.

 

[mildmanneredjanitor]

 

[securespark]

DVD invented 95, Adam, if my encephalitis-riddled brain remembers correctly...

 

[ZenStalinist]

Vinyl

mmj... how dare you suggest that?!!

Go vinyl. It still exists don't it, certainly more alive than minidisc regards prerecorded stuff.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

R.I.P.
.
.
.
Vinyl
.
.

So that'll be why every HiFi mag doesn't have several new high-end record decks every month, and there's no market for low-volume, high-quality vinyl recordings.

 

[AdamW]

I don't know what the difficulty in mass producing blue / violet diode lasers is a opposed to the Red /IR variety, but apart from the chemical substate difference, not much I would hazard a guess at. Besides ultraviolet diode lasers have already been produced reliably in the labs, these lase at ~280 Nm as opposed to blu rays propsed 405 Nm.

Little known fact, but when CDs first came out they were read with a 780nm IR laser, now they are read with a 650nm red laser.

The main problem with blue and UV diodes is reliability and longevity. It would be great to have blue-laser discs (Blu-ray or otherwise), but you would be a bit miffed if the laser diode broke down when it was just out of warranty! You can make reliable lasers of these wavelengths, but even the smallest of these are great big Class 4 bu**ers that will have your eye out, not teeny little solid state ones.

Interesting idea on the gamma-ray disc, but other than the fact movie-buffs would be instantly recognisable due to glowing in the dark, there could be some problems: If we take your gamma rays with a wavelength of 10^-14m, we are going to find that anything of a similar size will absorb signal power (think aerial), anything it doesn't will either penetrate or scatter... Atomic nucleii have a diameter of about 10^ -14m... So, I think you would have a very hard time picking a signal out of all the gamma rays that would be flying back at your sensor!

There are probably ways around it (re-emission of absorbed gamma rays? Possibly too unreliable), and what engineer doesn't love a challenge?

Whatever happened to those funky fluorescing holographic discs they were talking about a couple of years back?

 

[AdamW]

So that'll be why every HiFi mag doesn't have several new high-end record decks every month,

They also have articles on how wearing different coloured pants and calling your children "Dave" can improve the sound quality of your stereo

 

[mildmanneredjanitor]

Oh dear... I've upset the purists

I actually rather like my music to be 'clean'. With the advent of CD's, this was made possible. Gone are the days of taking scratched records back to the shop, or trying to decide on using c60 and missing the last few minutes when recording to listen to the album in the car or using c90's and having to fast forward at the end of the tape to start at the beginning....

Move with the times boys! Technology is to be embraced. Higher capacity will mean higher sampling rates in the future I'm sure.

The artists will catch up one day... Jean Michael Jarre has launched 'Aero' in 5.1, hopefully others will follow... (eventually!)

I'm sure that a £2,000 component hifi would sound lovely, but I would much rather spend £200 on a good quality system that I will throw away in 5 years time when it has gone wrong and unviable to repair and or obsolete.

Just my point of view!

 

[AdamW]

Jean Michael Jarre has launched 'Aero' in 5.1, hopefully others will follow... (eventually!)

And here is Monsieur Jarre playing with a green laser.

Did I mention I have a green laser? But I don't have a mullet hairstyle.

Looked at that "laser harp" he is playing, it strongly resembles something I built whilst waiting for my lab partner to show up at uni. This was simply a voltage-controlled oscillator, with the voltage controlled by an LED (hooded, so only illuminating upwards), illuminating your hand and then the reflected light being received at a light-dependent resistor next to the LED. The nearer you move your hand, the greater intensity of light incident on the LDR, the greater the voltage and the higher the frequency of the oscillator. You then mix this with a "reference" oscillator (fixed frequency) and you end up with an audible sound. You move your hand nearer the LED/LDR and the pitch goes up, move it away and the pitche goes down. Very similar in principle to the Theremin (built one of them once as well), but using light.

Unfortunately my lab partner showed up the next day so I never got it past the "look at this cool 'sort-of' working circuit I built on a breadboard" stage.

 

[kendor]

Going back to the blu ray stuff,

Well, if you want to hijack this important 'Rum and Raisin' issue

Yeah Butt out Ed!

 

[2scoops0406]

unfortunately, producing a gamma ray laser in the first place would take enormous amounts of energy, coupled as Adam says with a few teeny radiation issues. X ray lasers have been produced, but these would require the energy of a nuclear explosion, this lead me on to an interesting thought, maybe the required energy could be found for my gamma ray laser by perfecting the fusion of Rum and Raisin ice cream. I'll look into it and let you know the results.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

but I would much rather spend £200 on a good quality system

You can't get a good quality system for £200.....