Forget Blu-ray's 200 GB disc capacity. Say good bye to HD DVD's 1,024 GB (one Terabyte) storage capability. While you're at it you can cross out Hitachi-Maxell's 300GB holographic CD and InPhase's upcoming 1.6 TB rewritable optical disc.

Why even the 50,000 GB DVD couldn't hold a candle to the new Rainbow Versatile Disc's (RVD) 123.60 Petabyte capacity. Actually you shouldn't hold a candle to the RVD because it's made out of paper.

Yes, you read it right. It's made of paper and it holds 123.60 Petabytes of data.

A petabyte is 2 to the 50th power, or 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes. That's a figure only Stephen Hawking's mind can comprehend without going into shock so don't push your luck. Currently, the largest hard drives are measured in terabytes so you can only reach petabyte territory when measuring storage space of multiple hard drives or other collections of data. Until now.

According to its twentysomething Indian inventor, Sainul Abideen, the technology's so-called rainbow format was designed to be printed out in the form of images: circle or square, certain colour combinations and certain other forms. Each trigonometric form and color combination represents a complete pattern. The data which gets converted into an image form can then printed on paper, plastic or any other thing.

Using a scanner, the rainbow picture is converted into data. It also contains an efficiently-designed error checking system.

In his prototype, Abideen managed to store 432 pages of foolscap paper text typed on a 4-inch square of paper. He also demoed a 45-second video clip of a film stored on an ordinary paper. Because it is made of paper, RVD's cost a hell of a lot less. About 20 U.S. cents for 131 times more storage capacity than a CD which costs a hell of a lot more.

But size and price aren't the RVD's main selling point. Sainul says the biggest advantage of the new technology is its eco-friendliness. RVDs unlike other storage media are biodegradable. You may think that's not very reassuring, but paper can last a long, long time when stored properly. The Diamond Sutra, the world's earliest printed book, is more than a thousand years old. And that was kept in a cave.

There's been talk about super high-capacity discs for some time now. TDK even said something about having a 200GB Blu-Ray disc in August. Well, word's just trickled out that this week, Hitachi-Maxell will be organizing a showcase to present their latest offering to the public: their new 300GB holographic CDs.

Now that's a whole lot of space for data. Hitachi-Maxell's new 300GB holographic discs also have a transfer rate of 20MB/sec, combining high-speed transfers with sky-high capacity. These babies will no doubt prove invaluable for storing, say, uncompressed movies and music files that could be edited at a later time.

That's not all, too. InPhase has a second-generation 800GB rewritable optical disc with data transfer rates of about 80MBbps in the works for 2008, with plans to expand its capacity to 1.6TB by 2010.

Of course, with increased capacity comes a proportionately increased price tag. The 300GB discs are expected to fetch a price of around US$ 100 to US$ 125, while the optical drive that'll be used to operate them is expected to have a whopping price of US$ 15,000. Definitely not something that the common everyman can afford right now, but when the second-gen discs roll out, we expect these ones to get a price cut.

We weren't kidding when we put that headline up. Hitachi's coming out with a series of 50 and 60-inch plasma screens that fall under the banner of the Wooo10000 series. They're huge, and definitely a boost to your home entertainment center.

There are three Wooo types available: the W50P-HR10000 50V, the W50P-H10000, and the W60P-XR10000. Each of the Wooos are HDMI-capable and have their own hard drive with 250 gigs of space. The W50s have a max resolution of 1280x1080 while the W60 has a whopping 1920×1080 pixel resolution! It sounds almost Tivolicious just thinking about using one of these machines.

Be ready to pay up though. The W50 models will be coming out in November for anywhere from $4000-5000, while the W60 is pegged at around $8000 and will be out in late december. Yes, now would be a good time to save up some cash for this mean couch potato machine.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies have today launched two new automotive hard drives in Japan. The two new hard drives, called the J4K50 and N4K50, are Hitachi's fourth-generation hard drives geared for portable devices used in cars including Satellite Navigation, In Car Audio/Video Entertainment devices and mobile computing.

The aptly-named 'Endurastar' series of hard drives feature a new wider temperature range, a higher altitude range and the incorporation of shock-absorption technologies so that your electronic device doesn't give up whilst on the move travelling over a pot hole. The drives can survive as much as 3.0G operating vibration and up to an 800G drop shock, which for a 50GB hard drive is a lot of stress.

Although we currently do not know the difference between the two, as they both have a storage capacity of 50GB, both the J4K50 and the N4K50 will be available in the first quarter of 2007.

Holding your breath for the winner in the Blu-ray vs HD DVD War? Hold it a little longer. The next-gen DVD format war has been reset to sometime 2007 due to the shortage of blue laser diodes needed by the optical drives for both systems.

According to DigiTimes sources, manufacturers of the blue laser diodes admitted they are way behind. This prompted Sony to suspend shipping its own blue laser diodes to other customers. Instead, it is diverting them to its PS3 production line. Sony pledged to ship 4 million (or 2 million, depending on who's doing the PR circuit) PS3 units by the end of this year.

Philips, Sony, Matsushita, Hitachi, Ben-Q and other CE players already announced their HD DVD or Blu-ray drives, but according to DigiTimes only Pioneer, Plextor and possibly Toshiba are likely to meet their roll out dates.

Despite consumer demands, the race for the next-gen DVD format is still doing warm-up rounds for now and until blue laser diodes supply pick up around first quarter 2007.

It's been in development for quite a while now, but Hitachi is expected to finally crank out a 1-terabyte hard drive for people to use on their computers before the end of the year.

Yes folks, terabyte.

1,000 gigabytes.

That's the whole run of Survivor (from the days when Richard Hatch was naked to the present) coupled with every episode of Beverly Hills 90210 and Baywatch ever made on your desktop right there. Why you'd want naked Richard Hatch, Baywatch and 90210 on your computer is up to you though.

Unlike the previously mentioned terabyte hard drive "Yellow Box" of Anthology Solutions, which really was inside a box and weighed 14 pounds, this hard drive will be 3.5 inches in diameter and will probably weigh a lot less. Hitachi hopes that people will start using them for their personal or home server needs.

The news is a perfect milestone, really, as September 13, 2006 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the hard drive. From 5 MB on a giant platter to a terabyte on a disc, that's a lot of history right there.

If the Panasonic 103-inch HD Plasma display will eternally remain in your wishlist for the simple reason that you can't afford it, perhaps you'd want to take a look at some of the alternatives.

Hitachi is on an all-out "Wooo TV" campaign by unveiling not one, but three HD-Ready TVs aimed at the financially-challenged market. If you're part of that population, then start saving up for the 26- and 32-inch HD-Ready LCD TV and the 37-inch HD Plasma Display Panel.

The Wooo TVs boast of high screen resolution that will completely change your viewing experience, especially if you're used to your ho-hum TV sets. The ultra slim design would make you wonder why you still have those CRT monitor-like TVs.

While Hitachi is marketing the cheap HD TVs, oddly enough there was no mention of the prices. But if you go to play.com (and perhaps several other online retailers), the 32-inch Wooo TV is going for £679.99 ($1288). Still pretty steep for the budget-conscious public, but at least you know, it wouldn't take a lifetime to save up for it. 

  

Hitachi has teamed up with the YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory to create a RFID smart tag that can be read from up to 30 meters away. The tiny battery powered tag comes encased in a small cube 15mm wide that will protect it from whatever life will throw at it. RFID tags have been dubbed by many as the future of the way we live our lives. It has even been suggested for food in Supermarkets to be tagged with RFIDs in order to eliminate the need for the checkout. A reader would add up the values stored on the RFIDs in seconds to give you the bill.

This move into the RFID market could be Hitachi's preparation for the custom that will ensue when the technology becomes more widespread in places like supermarkets. This 30m long range RFID would be better suited to a dock/harbour where containers are transported in order to keep logs, or sticking with the supermarket idea, could be used to catch thieves. The price of the new active smart tag will start at around 500 yen ($4.40), not bad for an anti-theft device.

Just like Blu-ray, HD DVD announced the release of a recordable media before burners are even revealed. Early this month, Hitachi and Mitsubishi announced that July 5 will see the entry of 15GB HD DVD-R media in Japan. They promised that the RW and dual-layer versions will also be coming out later in the summer. They stayed true to their words.

Although the HD DVD-RW has not been announced yet, Mitsubishi reveals that a 30GB dual-layer HD DVD-R will surely come out next month. The single-sided media can hold 150 minutes of HD content encoded at a 24Mbps playback rate. Mitsubishi highlighted the fact that the coming dual layer disc uses high-sensitivity dye for accurate recording on both the near-side and inner storage layers. Just like Blu-ray discs, the HD DVD discs will include the AACS copy-protection technology.

Verbatim may soon offer the 15GB and 30GB HD DVD-R discs in the future as the company is owned by Mitsubishi.

It looks like the people at TG Daily, just made a minor boo-boo. Apparently, they recently reported about four new LCD TVs from Hitachi that integrate a new generation video processor which is capable of "advanced 1080p histogram processing" for about $2200 in a 32" package. In their site, this was written - "Turns out, the existence of a 1080p processor does not necessarily translate into a 1080p capable TV."...You may not realize it, but assumptions could really hurt people and businesses. But you gotta give 'em credit, at least they admitted their mistake.

They were corrected by Hitachi Senior Product Manager, Bill Whalen. According to him, "while the chip can create and convert the highest resolution, the TV itself cannot. In fact, the chip may take a 1080i (interlaced) or 1080p source, convert it to 1080p (in case of 1080i sources) - and then render it back down to a resolution the TV actually supports. In the case of the four new Hitachi LCD TVs, which will be introduced later this year for prices between $2200 and $3000, that would be 768p (1366x768 progressive)." Wohow...I got lost in there after the first sentence...with that, I couldn't really blame the guys who was responsible for the flaw.

TG Daily also apologized to those who read the flawed report, especially to those "put one of the Hitachi LCD TVs on their shopping list because of their article". They promised to look closely on future HDTV releases so that this mistake won't happen again. Oh well, there are a lot of cliches that will excuse what happened, such as everybody makes mistakes, nobody is perfect, you can't win 'em all, practice makes perfect, etcetera...Bottom line - it happens, just shake it off, and go on working.