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Is there any chance that the costs of one, or more, types of memory
card will drop enough to allow them to compete with dvd's as a direct-
from-studio content source?

It seems like a high definition copy could fit on a card, and future
hdtv sets might come with a slot for flash card uploads. It would save
a lot of space, if movies started coming out on cards the size of a
gum stick.

On Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:25:40 -0800, heremon wrote:

> Is there any chance that the costs of one, or more, types of memory card
> will drop enough to allow them to compete with dvd's as a direct-
> from-studio content source?

No chance. DVDs are very very cheap to manufacture. Flash cards are
active semiconductor devices - they will always cost a lot more than DVDs.

On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 04:19:18 GMT, John carter <> wrote:

>On Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:25:40 -0800, heremon wrote:
>
>> Is there any chance that the costs of one, or more, types of memory card
>> will drop enough to allow them to compete with dvd's as a direct-
>> from-studio content source?
>
>No chance. DVDs are very very cheap to manufacture. Flash cards are
>active semiconductor devices - they will always cost a lot more than DVDs.
>
>

Exactly. The very same way that floppies are so cheap to produce and don't need
anything more than a magnetic head to read and write to them. Those elaborate
optical storage discs for storing audio require lasers more powerful than are
available to consumers. The cost of the optical laser writers alone making them
impossible to own. The amount of technology and its high production costs
putting CD writers and the expensive media beyond anyone's reach and needs. Not
to mention that any society can create magnetic media and a way to read it. My
data is never going to be unreadable. It's not as safe nor as easy to reproduce
as a mechanical groove in a record, but its still within reach of most
civilizations to read my data in the future if they just know about electricity
and magnets. And I can store much more data this way. Better to just stick with
floppies. Though I have to admit, I've not used the 8" diameter ones in a while.
I have a case of them in the basement. When they found a way to store 168k on a
5.25" floppy compared to the same storage on the 8" ones, I invested in that new
technology without even thinking about it. I just copied all the data on my 8"
floppies to my 5.25" ones.

DVDs? What are those?

In message <>, IronyMan
<> writes
>On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 04:19:18 GMT, John carter <> wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:25:40 -0800, heremon wrote:
>>
>>> Is there any chance that the costs of one, or more, types of memory card
>>> will drop enough to allow them to compete with dvd's as a direct-
>>> from-studio content source?
>>
>>No chance. DVDs are very very cheap to manufacture. Flash cards are
>>active semiconductor devices - they will always cost a lot more than DVDs.
>>
>>
>
>Exactly. The very same way that floppies are so cheap to produce and don't need
>anything more than a magnetic head to read and write to them. Those elaborate
>optical storage discs for storing audio require lasers more powerful than are
>available to consumers. The cost of the optical laser writers alone making them
>impossible to own. The amount of technology and its high production costs
>putting CD writers and the expensive media beyond anyone's reach and needs. Not
>to mention that any society can create magnetic media and a way to read it. My
>data is never going to be unreadable. It's not as safe nor as easy to reproduce
>as a mechanical groove in a record, but its still within reach of most
>civilizations to read my data in the future if they just know about electricity
>and magnets. And I can store much more data this way. Better to just stick with
>floppies. Though I have to admit, I've not used the 8" diameter ones in
>a while.
>I have a case of them in the basement. When they found a way to store 168k on a
>5.25" floppy compared to the same storage on the 8" ones, I invested in
>that new
>technology without even thinking about it. I just copied all the data on my 8"
>floppies to my 5.25" ones.
>
>DVDs? What are those?
>

Careful, I had a mouthful of coffee, that's another keyboard wrecked.

Never had any 8" floppies, I've got an unopened box of 5.25" in the
cupboard.

Regards,
--
Neil Pugh

Neil wrote:
<snip>
>
> Careful, I had a mouthful of coffee, that's another keyboard wrecked.
>
> Never had any 8" floppies, I've got an unopened box of 5.25" in the
> cupboard.
>
> Regards,

I hope you aren't feeling sad about missing out on 8" floppies. I had
some dealings with them on mainframes (IBM 135, 145), minicomputers,
some early microcomputers, and keypunch replacement devices; they were
convenient for transferring data from mainframes to minis, among other
things. Fine in their time--which corresponded roughly with the hyday of
Kodak Tri-X.
Allen

On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 08:28:51 -0600, Allen <> wrote:

>Neil wrote:
><snip>
>>
>> Careful, I had a mouthful of coffee, that's another keyboard wrecked.
>>
>> Never had any 8" floppies, I've got an unopened box of 5.25" in the
>> cupboard.
>>
>> Regards,
>
>I hope you aren't feeling sad about missing out on 8" floppies. I had
>some dealings with them on mainframes (IBM 135, 145), minicomputers,
>some early microcomputers, and keypunch replacement devices; they were
>convenient for transferring data from mainframes to minis, among other
>things. Fine in their time--which corresponded roughly with the hyday of
>Kodak Tri-X.
>Allen

And I hope you're not belittling my 8" floppies, they still work just fine for
transferring data to my 10 meg MFM hard-drives on my CP/M machines. With that
much storage I don't think I'll ever fill them up. But I do wish they'd get
these 150 baud modems smaller. The one I have now is the size of a medium
suitcase, weighs about 35 lbs., and needs to be hard-wired into the
communication lines. At least it still works good. The speed is impressive. I
can send all the data from an 8" - 168k single-sided floppy in about 2 days ...
if nothing goes wrong. I should invent some kind of error checking protocol, it
would help. So far the receiving computer owner and I just check our wall-clocks
and agree when I'll try to start sending data. If it fails then we try again on
15 minute intervals to get them talking to each other. It works about 50% of the
time.

IronyMan wrote:
<snip>
> And I hope you're not belittling my 8" floppies, they still work just fine for
> transferring data to my 10 meg MFM hard-drives on my CP/M machines. With that
> much storage I don't think I'll ever fill them up. But I do wish they'd get
> these 150 baud modems smaller. The one I have now is the size of a medium
> suitcase, weighs about 35 lbs., and needs to be hard-wired into the
> communication lines. At least it still works good. The speed is impressive. I
> can send all the data from an 8" - 168k single-sided floppy in about 2 days ...
> if nothing goes wrong. I should invent some kind of error checking protocol, it
> would help. So far the receiving computer owner and I just check our wall-clocks
> and agree when I'll try to start sending data. If it fails then we try again on
> 15 minute intervals to get them talking to each other. It works about 50% of the
> time.

Have you tried direct mail? It might be faster. Of course you would need
a second 8" drive to make a copy.
Allen

heremon wrote:
> Is there any chance that the costs of one, or more, types of memory
> card will drop enough to allow them to compete with dvd's as a direct-
> from-studio content source?
>
> It seems like a high definition copy could fit on a card, and future
> hdtv sets might come with a slot for flash card uploads. It would save
> a lot of space, if movies started coming out on cards the size of a
> gum stick.
>

Way back when I was at Uni I sat in on a modern optics course. Probably
the only thing I remember from it was the prospect of volumetric optical
storage. Rather than use just the surface to store data ie 2D which is
essentially what current optical disks do, the idea is to use the volume
of the storage medium. This is somewhat achieved by multi-layer disks
but the proposal would be for many more layers. Another 3D solution is
holographic storage. Advantages of holographic storage are
robustness/durability, all the data is stored in every part of the media
meaning that no data will be catastrophically lost with localised
damage. Both of these technologies were set to provide terabyte
capacity in a 12cm disc and looking at a transfer rate in the order of a
gigabit/s.

That was the talk nearly a decade ago. Guess we'll have to wait a bit
longer yet.

In article < .com>,
heremon <> wrote:

> Is there any chance that the costs of one, or more, types of memory
> card will drop enough to allow them to compete with dvd's as a direct-
> from-studio content source?
>
> It seems like a high definition copy could fit on a card, and future
> hdtv sets might come with a slot for flash card uploads. It would save
> a lot of space, if movies started coming out on cards the size of a
> gum stick.

Sure, there's a chance this will happen. There's also a chance it won't
happen.

IronyMan posted to rec.photo.digital:

> On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 08:28:51 -0600, Allen <> wrote:
>
>>Neil wrote:
>><snip>
>>>
>>> Careful, I had a mouthful of coffee, that's another keyboard
>>> wrecked.
>>>
>>> Never had any 8" floppies, I've got an unopened box of 5.25" in
>>> the cupboard.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>
>>I hope you aren't feeling sad about missing out on 8" floppies. I
>>had some dealings with them on mainframes (IBM 135, 145),
>>minicomputers, some early microcomputers, and keypunch replacement
>>devices; they were convenient for transferring data from mainframes
>>to minis, among other things. Fine in their time--which corresponded
>>roughly with the hyday of Kodak Tri-X.
>>Allen
>
> And I hope you're not belittling my 8" floppies, they still work
> just fine for transferring data to my 10 meg MFM hard-drives on my
> CP/M machines. With that much storage I don't think I'll ever fill
> them up. But I do wish they'd get these 150 baud modems smaller. The
> one I have now is the size of a medium suitcase, weighs about 35
> lbs., and needs to be hard-wired into the communication lines. At
> least it still works good. The speed is impressive. I can send all
> the data from an 8" - 168k single-sided floppy in about 2 days ...
> if nothing goes wrong. I should invent some kind of error checking
> protocol, it would help. So far the receiving computer owner and I
> just check our wall-clocks and agree when I'll try to start sending
> data. If it fails then we try again on 15 minute intervals to get
> them talking to each other. It works about 50% of the time.

Both your tongue and your groove must hurt by now.