Tech Blog

[#1]

With its incredible image and audio capabilities, Blu-ray has proven itself to be a tremendously versatile format. Its competitor today will be the VHS cassette, a form of magnetic media storage from the world-that-once-was. Let’s not underestimate the now-defunct technology that drove the spinning wheels of VHS cassettes – it’s proven itself to be incredibly robust. Without further adieu, it's time to throw these two storage mediums into the ring... for a 20th Century vs. 21st Century showdown.

Like Rocky Balboa, when VHS was first released many assumed it would never be champ. Its opponent, Betamax, truly was the Apollo Creed of the home video world. All around the globe, we watched the first and second Rocky films on these two formats – and were startled as Beta began to sway only years after its initial release. Soon VHS stood alone, and enjoyed an unchallenged reign for dang near a decade before a new kid would emerge to challenge him for the championship.

With a stunning resolution of 333 X 480, VHS was truly the king of NTSC formats. With that kind of resolution, one could look forward to viewing a stunning image composed from billions of dazzling pixels. Well, a bunch of colourful pixels. Uh, at least enough pixels to form an image. Okay, VHS’ best resolution was capable of about 1/6 of a Megapixel, but that’s better than a Gameboy. A monochrome Gameboy. Without a backlight. Played in a cave, at night.

So how does Blu-ray stack up? With an on-screen resolution of up to 1920 X 1080, it casts a long shadow -- one that plunges the VHS cassette into abject darkness, never to be seen of again. Predictably, Round One goes to Blu-ray.

Round Two. Capable of audio playback in the 20 Hz to 20 KHz range, Hi-Fi VHS cassettes delivered a level of sound quality that rivalled some of the finest headphones which can be purchased in dollar stores today. Blu-ray, on the other hand, features Dolby True HD Lossless audio – which offers sound that’s identical to the studio master, with a playback quality of up to 192 Khz.

Yeah, yeah. I know. Blu-ray wins again.

In 2008, a Japanese poll revealed that about 68 percent of the population still owned VHS players. Compare that to the 6.3 percent that owned Blu-ray players, and our collective surprise is self-evident. Future Shop is still proud to carry VHS-compatible devices, like the excellent and affordable Toshiba DVD Recorder/VHS Combo. The current availability of VHS devices is an amazing accomplishment for the old magnetic-tape based medium, considering it first hit the market in 1976.

So where will Blu-ray be in 36 years? Let’s cast our minds forward to 2048. Cybo-Rocky 6 has just been released, in a box set with Rambo First Blood Part 83. We’re sitting down in front of our glassless 3D media machine, which will probably be called the Sony Immers-o-Vision or the Toshiba Vis-o-Tron, or simply the Samsung Interacto. As Cybo-Rambo emerges from his cryogenic slumber and begins his descent to the planet Venus (to free the human settlers from their vicious mutant oppressors), will the VHS tape suddenly jam?

Only time will tell.

[#2]

we wont have physical media by then we barely have it now

there is no need to have it you buy a movie and you can stream it forever 

[#3]

For those that haven't heard about Sony...

  http://www.google.ca/search?q=sony+optical+drives&tbm=nws

[#4]

didnt hear about that, thanks for the tip XL

[#5]

That's too bad about optical media.  I am a dinosaur and prefer media to digital downloads.

Let's see what will happen now that physical media is on its way out.  How will we store our pictures?

[#6]

cant you just store your pics online? or on a NAS at home with redundancy ? "of course a fire will take out your NAS"  

heres hoping for cheaper online backup solutions that can handle my 8tb NAS lol 

[#7]

Pictures will be stored in the Cloud cameras will start to automatically upload pictures straight to the cloud after the picture is taken. No more SD cards or transfer cables

[#8]

is that camera i forget by who, that runs android ever coming out, google+ would prob auto upload all photos as well

[#9]

I guess no one here is concerned about privacy or security about uploading all the pictures of yourselves and your kids to the 'cloud' for the entire world to see?  I would've preferred to keep them in a shoebox in my bedroom.

[#10]

true, but you can crack wifi then just browse the users local lan and take the pics of their kids and read their calendar etc. etc. and then kidnap the kid right?

[#11]

Nikon just announced an Android based camera.

[#12]

ahh yes thats the one ;p any idea if they will ahve 3g access? or just wifi?

on another note, did any android "ipod" like devices make it to market yet?

[#13]

yes there is an Android Galaxy player that is like an ipod

[#14]

The Nikon S800c will be just wifi & bluetooth, no 3G.  If I want 3G, I could tether the wifi to my Blackberry.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkUhYqWn7kU&hd=1

Samsung is planning to release theirs soon.

[#15]

eww you use a blackberry lol

[#16]

that video sure didnt sell it lol

[#17]

Proud of it!

[#18]

I love my Blackberry! 

JB

[#19]

The future of physical media will be determined entirely by the amount of data which future programs require. If that amount of data exceeds available bandwidth, or if access to that bandwidth is too costly to be practical, physical storage media will continue to be relevant.

In the future, what kind of programs will require access to enormous amounts of data? Anything that’s substantially AI driven. Some followers of the Turing Test happen to believe that true AI will be achieved once a CPU can match the processing power of the human brain – which some researchers place at about 38 petaflops. To give you an example of how substantial that is, the world’s most powerful supercomputer (as of June 2012) can handle somewhere in the ballpark of 16 petaflops a second.

In case you’re interested, here’s the math on all this: a petabyte is the equivalent of 1073741824 megabytes. That means the human brain can process 38 X 1073741824 megabytes a second. Hold on. Let’s use smaller numbers.

1073741824 megabytes is 1024 terabytes. That means your brain can process about 38912 terabytes a second. That’s 2334720 terabytes a minute. Let’s assume that the initial generations of true AI will run at about the same speed. So 1 hour of input will require an estimated 140083200 terabytes of data. Bandwidth will not be able to accommodate that kind of throughput, at least until it gets more bandwidthier.

So what kind of storage medium will be able to accommodate such tremendous amounts of data? Well, where does our brain store data? Think about it for a second. You just processed 1024 terabytes.

Some scientist-types at Harvard recently manage to store 700 terabytes of data in a single gram of DNA. That translates to about 317520 terabytes per pound. With current technology, it would take a little over 441 pounds of DNA to store an hour of brain data. That ratio will improve in time. How do I know that? I weigh about 190 pounds. I’m made of DNA. The data encryption routines already at work in human beings would seem to indicate that we’re just starting to tap the true potential of this medium.

Physical storage media’s gonna be here for awhile, folks.

[#20]

yeah but im guessing we were talking about physical media for the consumer cds dvd blurays usb thumbdrives perhaps even portable hd's 

if your a video editor you most likely have a large storage array connected to your computer thats not going anywhere

and my NAS aint goin no where

alot of consumer media is digital and now with things like itunes in the cloud you dont have to store the file at home you can just stream it when you want it for life  

p.s. where is my dna powered NAS lol

[#21]

Wow, imagine how much brain-power I have in my big toe!

I don't think we're going to be storing movies on DNA anytime soon.  The shift has already happened towards a world with less physical media.  The big reason is because this means greater margins and more profits for corporations, plain and simple.