Discs

This high-speed CD cannon is a killer way to destroy old CDs

Give a person a fish and they’ll eat for a day. Give a person a workshop full of tools and they’ll build an utterly amazing cannon that launches CDs and DVDs like a machine gun. If there’s a better way to destroy a stack of misburned CDs, the internet hasn’t seen it yet. This creation…

Sploid Andrew Liszewski Jul 7

Will We Finally See a 1 TB Optical Disc in 2015?

Compared to a C-ROM’s meager 700 MB storage space, and a DVD’s 5-ish GB, a Blu-Ray’s 25 GB is pretty impressive. All of those are nothing compared to a whole Terabyte though, and that’s what FujiFilm is planning to pack on an optical disc arriving in 2015. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about…

Tech News Eric Limer Nov 18

Look! A Na’vi Made of 4,000 Avatar Blu-Ray Discs!

How did 20th Century Fox celebrate the new Blu-ray edition of Avatar, an epic tale of love, greed, and survival set in the wondrous jungles of Pandora? They gave a housewife a buncha Blu-ray discs and said, “make a mosaic.” https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-look-at-how-avatars-human-actors-transformed-5688751 But not just any housewife! This is Laura Hadland of “Extreme Housewifery,” probably best…

Tech News Kyle VanHemert Nov 17

TDK’s 1TB Optical Disc Is Like 41 Blu-rays In One

At Ceatec Japan, TDK highlighted a 1TB capacity optical disc—enough to hold a sizeable Blu-ray collection in the palm of your hand. The disc has a whopping 16 recording layers, where a 25GB Blu-ray has just one, and a beefed up 50GB Blu-ray is dual-layered. It also takes the same time to read one layer…

Tech News Brian Barrett Oct 11

Sony’s Potential Blu-ray Successor Fits an Entire Season of TV on One Disc

Sony just revealed the new laser they’re developing alongside Tohoku University. Regardless of the future of physical media, the specs are astounding to consider. The blue-violet laser fires ultra fast bursts of very thin beams of light. The wavelength measures 405 nanometers—that part is actually exactly the same as Blu-ray—but it pulses for durations of…

Tech News Mark Wilson Jul 23

Half a Million CDs In a Sea of Obsolescence

Where do all those “1000 HOURS FREE!” AOL discs end up? Apparently at Long Knoll Park in Kilmington, England, where a group of 160 friends recently laid 600,000 discs to create CDSea, a massive waterway of obsolete media. CDSea is the work of artist Bruce Munro, who put out the call for unused CDs only…

Tech News Kyle VanHemert Jun 23

DVDs Could Hold 1,000x Capacity of Blu-rays With New Japanese Research

While we’re waiting for the Blu-ray Disc Association to upgrade discs to 128GB capacity, Japanese scientists have found a way to increase DVD capacity by 1,000 times—using just a slick of metal material over each disc. https://gizmodo.com/blu-ray-discs-increasing-in-capacity-to-128gb-5510396 According to Shin-ichy Ohkoshi, the chemistry professor at the University of Tokyo leading the project, painting a variant…

Tech News Kat Hannaford May 24

Blu-ray Discs Increasing In Capacity To 128GB

Blu-ray Discs are getting a step-up, after the Blu-ray Disc Association announced two new specs for the format—BDXL, and IH-BD. There’s bad news however—you’ll need to buy a new player/recorder to use the 128GB discs. The new BDXL specification describes High Capacity Recordable and Rewritable discs which will write up to 128GB of content on…

Tech News Kat Hannaford Apr 6

PSP Fans Are Never Happy, With the PSPgo Set to Receive a UMD Add-On Via Logitech

After being derided since, oh, 2004, the UMD is set to return to the PSPgo, albeit thanks to the peripheral guys Logitech. https://gizmodo.com/pspgo-review-psp-goes-nowhere-you-havent-been-5367059 Sure, we can see why some people may want to play their old UMD games on their new PSPgo, which lacks the drive and plays solely downloaded titles, but they should’ve really…

Tech News Kat Hannaford Dec 2

Are Netflix Discs Going to Kill Me?

If I were to tell you that Netflix sleeves and discs were hotbeds of contamination and disease because they were handled by so many people from delivery to DVD player, you know what I’d be? A filthy liar, that’s what. This is the exact opposite of Netflix discs, which are actually quite clean, comparatively speaking.…

Movies Jack Loftus Nov 29

Blu-ray Will Never Become Common in Computers, Supposedly

Blu-ray is the format that’s replacing DVDs, but it appears that it arrived too late to be the last major optical format for computers. That title goes to the DVD. According to iSuppli, only 3.6% of PCs sold this year were shipped with a BD drive. And by 2013, that figure is only expected to…

Tech News Adam Frucci Aug 25

A Peek Inside a Blu-ray Factory

Sony recently opened a new Blu-ray factory in the suburbs of Sydney, and however you may feel about the format itself, the automatized precision in the creation of BDs is still a marvel. Charlie Brewer from News Limited walks you step by step (16 worthwhile photos in all) through the whole process as robots transform…

Movies Mark Wilson Jul 28

DVDs That Last for 1000 Years Might Be Overkill

Problem: Optical media like DVDs eventually die. Solution, according to Barry Lunt: Actually carve data into a disc composed of magic hard “persistent” materials with a laser. His Millennial Disks (say that 3x fast) can be read in regular DVD drives, despite being made with a secret sauce of “persistent” materials—he drops words like gold…

Tech News Matt Buchanan Jul 17

Shoplifter Caught Blu-Handed With 33 Discs Down Pants

Oklahoma City police caught this woman shoplifting at a local Target with 33 Blu-ray discs shoved down her pants. I just want to know, where was she hiding the player? And dear god, lady, have you not heard of Bittorrent? The cherry on top is that she was also charged with assault and battery. Pretty…

Tech News Brian Lam Jun 15

Do You Want Your Video Games As Downloads Or Discs?

With the news that Microsoft is offering full retail games on demand and Sony’s PSP Go breaking away from the UMD, it seems that the disc’s days are numbered. In your opinion, is that a good thing or a bad thing? https://gizmodo.com/xbox-live-full-retail-games-on-demand-download-mass-ef-5274395

Tech News Sean Fallon Jun 2

GE Makes Holographic Storage Breakthrough For Cheap(er) 500GB Discs

Sheinhardt Wigs GE engineers have announced a breakthrough in the formerly retardedly-expensive field of holographic storage: by making the holograms smaller, they can squeeze 500GB on standard-sized optical discs. And the even cooler part is that the base tech will be very similar to the laser systems used to read CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs…

Tech News John Mahoney Apr 27

Dark Knight’s Chris Nolan Event Shows BD-Live Is Not Quite Ready

Chris Nolan just hosted the live, on-demand substitute for a Dark Knight commentary track last night. So why was I left unsatisfied after squinting at my TV for two and a half hours? https://gizmodo.com/reminder-christopher-nolan-on-blu-ray-chat-tonight-5113443 To refresh, BD-Live is the Blu-ray technology that allows for more interactive special features on your disc, like being able to…

Tech News Jason Chen Dec 19

Microsoft Responds to Xbox 360 Disc Scratching Allegations

While recently unsealed documents suggests that Microsoft knew about Xbox 360 disc scratching problems all along, Microsoft has finally stepped forward to respond to the allegations. https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-allegedly-knew-xbox-360-was-scratching-discs-5110840 Speaking with Edge, a Microsoft spokesperson explained: While we have had some users contact us with concerns about scratched discs, it is much less than 1 percent of…

Tech News Mark Wilson Dec 17

This Week in Blu-Ray: Is it Christmas Yet? Edition

We’re not going to pretty it up for you, today is probably not the most exciting week in Blu-ray releases. Warner is making an early push with their holiday titles and offering a 4-pack including A Christmas Story, Elf, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and The Polar Express. If there’s any saving grace, it’s that Polar…

Movies Mark Wilson Oct 28

This Week In Blu-ray: Kill the Baby Mama Edition

Giz pick of the week: Baby Mama Oh sure, Kill Bill volumes 1 and 2 and are out, as are Rudy and Jerry Maguire, and there’s nothing special on the $35 Blu-ray edition that’s not the the DVD of Baby Mama (other than hi def). But roughly half of the Gizmodo staff has a crush…

Movies Mark Wilson Sep 9

Discs

This high-speed CD cannon is a killer way to destroy old CDs

Will We Finally See a 1 TB Optical Disc in 2015?

Look! A Na’vi Made of 4,000 Avatar Blu-Ray Discs!

TDK’s 1TB Optical Disc Is Like 41 Blu-rays In One

Sony’s Potential Blu-ray Successor Fits an Entire Season of TV on One Disc

Half a Million CDs In a Sea of Obsolescence

DVDs Could Hold 1,000x Capacity of Blu-rays With New Japanese Research

Blu-ray Discs Increasing In Capacity To 128GB

PSP Fans Are Never Happy, With the PSPgo Set to Receive a UMD Add-On Via Logitech

Are Netflix Discs Going to Kill Me?

Blu-ray Will Never Become Common in Computers, Supposedly

A Peek Inside a Blu-ray Factory

DVDs That Last for 1000 Years Might Be Overkill

Shoplifter Caught Blu-Handed With 33 Discs Down Pants

Do You Want Your Video Games As Downloads Or Discs?

GE Makes Holographic Storage Breakthrough For Cheap(er) 500GB Discs

Dark Knight’s Chris Nolan Event Shows BD-Live Is Not Quite Ready

Microsoft Responds to Xbox 360 Disc Scratching Allegations

This Week in Blu-Ray: Is it Christmas Yet? Edition

This Week In Blu-ray: Kill the Baby Mama Edition

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