Friday, April 16, 2004
Sony Develops Paper Blu-ray Disc
Posted by Suhit Gupta in "NEWS" @ 03:00 PM
"Sony and Toppan Printing, a large Japanese printing company, have developed a Blu-ray Disc based on a paper substrate which promises to be more environmentally friendly and secure when destroyed than traditional discs, they announced."
We have already reported on the Blu-Ray technology before - it uses blue lasers instead of the traditional red lasers found in our typical CD/DVD players. It is because they use blue lasers, and since the frequency of blue light is smaller than that of red light, that the Blu-Ray drives can write more data onto a disc in the same amount of space. "In a Blu-ray Disc the recording layer on which the data is stored lies under a 0.1mm protective layer and on top of a 1.1mm thick substrate. The substrate, or basic surface on which a material adheres, is usually made of a polycarbonate plastic but the new prototype disc replaces this with paper. The result is a disc of which paper makes up approximately 51 percent of its weight."
Estimates on cost and mass production techniques have not been investigated fully by the companies yet, however their initial claims appear to suggest that this will be viable. I only throw away about 15 or so failed CD-Rs a year, but combined with all the other people out there that do the same, and the fact that they are non-biodegradable, the amount of waste is staggering. The paper discs would be an excellent product IMHO.
We have already reported on the Blu-Ray technology before - it uses blue lasers instead of the traditional red lasers found in our typical CD/DVD players. It is because they use blue lasers, and since the frequency of blue light is smaller than that of red light, that the Blu-Ray drives can write more data onto a disc in the same amount of space. "In a Blu-ray Disc the recording layer on which the data is stored lies under a 0.1mm protective layer and on top of a 1.1mm thick substrate. The substrate, or basic surface on which a material adheres, is usually made of a polycarbonate plastic but the new prototype disc replaces this with paper. The result is a disc of which paper makes up approximately 51 percent of its weight."
Estimates on cost and mass production techniques have not been investigated fully by the companies yet, however their initial claims appear to suggest that this will be viable. I only throw away about 15 or so failed CD-Rs a year, but combined with all the other people out there that do the same, and the fact that they are non-biodegradable, the amount of waste is staggering. The paper discs would be an excellent product IMHO.
