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London (pte004/27.05.2005/08:35) - A DVD patent has just been released to the US storage company Iomega http://iomega.com . The new DVD may be able to hold several hundred movies - almost a terabyte of data, which is between 40 to 100 times more information than current DVDs can hold.
The new patent uses more nanometre-scale sloped ridges to diffract light, and is called 'Method and Apparatus for Optical Data Storage'.
Using shorter wavelength light to read smaller surface features than conventional DVDs - which hold about 8.5 gigabytes - the storage of 10 times as much data will be possible.
Toshiba http://www.toshiba.com , NEC and Sanyo have already produced the HD-DVD - and Sony has invented the Blu-Ray Disc. Both are seeking acceptance in the market.
But Iomega's patent, called Articulated Optical Digital Versatile Disc (AO-DVD), has sub-wave surface bumps sloping at slightly different angles, which would allow even more information - up to 100 times more - to be encoded.
Physicists at the Imperial College London, UK http://www.imperial.ac.uk/physics are also working on increasing storage space on DVDs. Researcher Peter Török said that whether the new DVD technology takes off will depend on the entertainment industry. "The decision as to whether to turn this into a product doesn't depend on us," he said. "It depends on Hollywood."
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