# Move over, DVDs -- MODS are coming! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 3, 2004, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315 "2004-10-03T12:51:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2004, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/1 "2004-10-03T12:51:39Z")
So have you gotten used to the increased data capacity on DVDs and now CDs seem small? Save your pennies for a new burner, one that will make DVDs look like paper tape – [Multiplexed Optical Data Storage,](http://news.com.com/Simpsons+swallowed+whole+by+DVD+of+the+future/2100-1041_3-5387732.html?tag=st.rc.targ_mb) or MODS. > [@](#): > > MODS can potentially store up to one terabyte (1,000 gigabytes) of data on one standard-size disc–enough for 472 hours of film, or every episode of the Simpsons… > > MODS will be laser-based like DVDs, CDs and the new Blu-ray system but uses much more subtle variations in the way light reflects from the discs. Where existing schemes have patterns of pits that reflect the laser as a series of ones and zeros, MODS can encode and detect more than 300 variations per pit. After error correction and encoding, this leads to 10 times the data density of Blu-ray Disc, currently the record holder for consumer optical storage. Unfortunately, a commercial product is 5 to 10 years away, so you’d better be content with DVDs for now. ---
**Author:** ![PussyCow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/22d042/32.png) [@PussyCow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PussyCow)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2004, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/2 "2004-10-03T13:03:14Z")
Oh man! I _just_ bought my first DVD player/burner. Worthless piece of junk. ---
**Author:** ![Epimetheus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c4cdca/32.png) [@Epimetheus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Epimetheus)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2004, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/3 "2004-10-03T13:34:14Z")
You can always get an EVD. (Enhanced video disk) I don’t think it has overcome its [hurdles](http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5150373.html) yet. The Japanese made DVDs that [out of paper](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3561143&thesection=technology&thesubsection=general&thesecondsubsection=): apparently they can hold 5 times the data of a regular CD. ---
**Author:** ![Hal\_Briston](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a9a28c/32.png) [@Hal\_Briston](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hal_Briston)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2004, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/4 "2004-10-03T13:53:58Z")
Damnit. That’s it…I’m sick of the obsolescence merry-go-round. I’m holding out this time. No more product upgrades for me until I can get every single second of media in history on one, small nanochip that fits conveniently into a reader embedded in the back of my skull. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2004, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/5 "2004-10-03T13:59:01Z")
> [@Epimetheus](#): > > The Japanese made DVDs that [out of paper](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3561143&thesection=technology&thesubsection=general&thesecondsubsection=): apparently they can hold 5 times the data of a regular CD. 5 times! I is to larf! That breakthru technology would make it about .3% of a MOD disk! Bring on the MODs! Help! I can’t stop using exclamation marks! ---
**Author:** ![Epimetheus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c4cdca/32.png) [@Epimetheus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Epimetheus)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2004, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/6 "2004-10-03T14:32:16Z")
Well, I meant DVD, not CD. Seeing how I imagine Blue-ray technology will be here half a decade before MODS, I imagine it is the first next step. There are more factors to weigh in, like are companies really going to put enough movies on them to fill up 1000 GB? If they did, and you had every single episode of the simpsons on one, guess how much that would cost. Probably close to a grand, for one MODS disk. The next question arises about encription and protection of movies, when EVDs were first announced, it was a concern to movie companies to not use this technology because it did not allow for proper copyright protection capabilities. If 1 MOD disk can hold that much information, that means less will be bought right? Which means a MOD/writer blank disk will cost a bit of money. Not to mention it faces the same hurdles as DVDs do. Playability. If you are playing music, a CD is optimal because it can be played out of just about any CD player. Seen any Music DVD players? Think there will be Music Mod players? ---
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2004, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/7 "2004-10-03T14:58:44Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > Unfortunately, a commercial product is 5 to 10 years away, so you’d better be content with DVDs for now. At which time it’ll STILL take 12 of them to back up my data. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Ponder\_Stibbons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponder_stibbons/32/343_2.png) [@Ponder\_Stibbons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponder_Stibbons)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2004, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/8 "2004-10-03T15:58:07Z")
Well, this development is going to make it a bit confusing for us when someone posts a pit thread titled “Damn those mods!” ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2004, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/9 "2004-10-03T21:22:18Z")
> [@Epimetheus](#): > > Well, I meant DVD, not CD. Seeing how I imagine Blue-ray technology will be here half a decade before MODS, I imagine it is the first next step. Probably so. But it may put a damper on Blu-Ray sales if a significantly improved technology is seen as looming in the horizon. Who wants to get stuck with the newest and obsolete-est stuff all at the same time? > [@](#): > > There are more factors to weigh in, like are companies really going to put enough movies on them to fill up 1000 GB? If they did, and you had every single episode of the simpsons on one, guess how much that would cost. Probably close to a grand, for one MODS disk. The next question arises about encription and protection of movies, when EVDs were first announced, it was a concern to movie companies to not use this technology because it did not allow for proper copyright protection capabilities. > > If 1 MOD disk can hold that much information, that means less will be bought right? Which means a MOD/writer blank disk will cost a bit of money. Not to mention it faces the same hurdles as DVDs do. Playability. If you are playing music, a CD is optimal because it can be played out of just about any CD player. Seen any Music DVD players? Think there will be Music Mod players? I’m not trying to pick a fight, but much of your post reminds me of what I heard not long ago – “Who needs more than 640K of RAM?”, or “a hard drive larger than 2GB – who has that much data to store?” or “The world could use one or two computers, at most,” or, “30 minutes on one LP record? We don’t have songs that long!”, or “Who needs 16 colors on the screen – 4 is just fine!” The moral here is that technology feeds on itself. If RAM gets cheaper and more plentiful, applications that were impractical before become feasible now. Ditto, storage space and computing power. As far as a MOD blank costing a lot of money, who knows? Could you have predicted, 10 years ago, that a CD blank would cost 25 cents and would read at 64X? (In 1989, my company bought a CD-RAM (WORM) cartridge drive for $2400 that used 650MB blanks that cost $250 apiece!) If past experience is a guide, I imagine the first MOD disks will be expensive and rapidly decrease in price until they are essentially free per byte stored; no reason they should be any different from CDs or DVDs. Who would have believed, back in the days when 35mm film ruled the entertainment roost, that you would be able to buy a VHS tape of cartoons at Wal-Mart for one dollar (which I just did)? And yes, I have seen Music DVD players. I have one. It plays DVDs, CDs, and can play MP3 or WAV music or a JPG file just fine. I haven’t tried this, but I see no reason why I couldn’t put many of my CDs on a single DVD if I wanted to and play the same DVD disk for several days without repeating anything. And, just for kicks, I did some quick calculations on my modest music collection. If I were to transfer about 600 LPs, CDs and tapes to digital storage (using no compression), and add about 10GB of MP3s from other sources, that would occupy about 500GB total. A 1TB MOD disk would be just about the right size to store it all, and a MOD player could play anything I own without changing media. Of course, a computer with a standard hard drive would be in the same ballpark, so we’ll have to see how the pricing works down the road to see which is better. ---
**Author:** ![Epimetheus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c4cdca/32.png) [@Epimetheus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Epimetheus)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2004, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/10 "2004-10-03T22:53:26Z")
You bring up some good points. I can see some games and HDTV style movies and even later graphical technology using up that kind of space. I agree that you cannot second guess technology, but you can’t use that argument as a blanket either. I don’t see any 100 gb games or movies out there (not that it apparently means they aren’t out there I suppose), let alone can reasonably expect any games to reach 1000 GB. Uhhg, scary thought actually. Imagine how slow that would run, even on a “Pentium 8” 10.5 Ghz computer. I too see the paralells in the 64 ram arguments, and perhaps it is my short sightedness, but I cannot help but think they are different. Technology feeds upon itself, sure, but sooner or later it reaches limits. I know we are much closer to those limits than we were in 1984 when those arguments were valid. I did not know they even had DVD music players. I know you can play MP3 CDs in almost any DVD player, but didn’t know they actually had disk players for DVDs with MP3s on them- they have these that are portable? Interesting. Hey, don’t get me wrong, I hope these things work out, but I got all excited when I first heard about the EVDs too. I am not sure I want to hold my breath about these for the same reasons. I do have my fingers crossed though. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2004, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/11 "2004-10-03T23:36:50Z")
By “DVD music player” do you mean a [DVD-Audio](http://dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#1.12) player, or one that can play MP3s or other music files stored on a recordable DVD disc? ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2004, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/12 "2004-10-04T00:13:15Z")
> [@Epimetheus](#): > > I don’t see any 100 gb games or movies out there (not that it apparently means they aren’t out there I suppose), let alone can reasonably expect any games to reach 1000 GB. Uhhg, scary thought actually. Imagine how slow that would run, even on a “Pentium 8” 10.5 Ghz computer. Imagine how fast it will run on the 2008 model of the Super-Pentium 800 Turbo Special at 10.5 Thz! > [@](#): > > I too see the paralells in the 64 ram arguments, and perhaps it is my short sightedness, but I cannot help but think they are different. Technology feeds upon itself, sure, but sooner or later it reaches limits. I know we are much closer to those limits than we were in 1984 when those arguments were valid. Interestingly, the closer we get to those limits, the farther away they seem to recede. I have a 1950’s book by Vance Packard warning that we will run out of most natural resources on the earth, like oil, tin and iron by 1985. Didn’t happen, as far as I know. And so far, Moore’s Law seems to be holding its own or even speeding up. > [@](#): > > I did not know they even had DVD music players. I know you can play MP3 CDs in almost any DVD player, but didn’t know they actually had disk players for DVDs with MP3s on them- they have these that are portable? Interesting. The technology for DVD and CD players is almost identical; a laser beam reading pits and lands. The main difference is the length of the lands and the speed of the spindle. The lowest-level data encoding is identical, I believe. So if software exists that interprets the bytes as MP3 music, all that has to happen is the manufacturer includes the appropriate software with the hardware. Over a year ago, I purchased a $40 DVD player that I was pleasantly surprised to find understood PC directories/folders perfectly, made a slide show of JPG and GIF files, made sound from WAV, MP3 and standard music CDs, and of course played DVDS, too. Perhaps it even handled other music or picture formats; again, it’s just a matter of a software program. If a computer can read it, a DVD/CD player can. In all honesty, I haven’t tried putting MP3 music on a DVD-R, but I see no reason why that wouldn’t work. And if it doesn’t, wait until next year’s model. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2004, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/13 "2004-10-04T00:22:42Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > By “DVD music player” do you mean a [DVD-Audio](http://dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#1.12) player, or one that can play MP3s or other music files stored on a recordable DVD disc? After reading that link, which I haven’t seen in years, I might have to hedge my statements a trifle. Essentially, DVDs are just big CDs, but it is entirely possible that manufacturers are treating them as a different animal, and that true DVD audio works differently. Not at low-level, but somewhere in the interpretative software, I would think. (Copy-protection could be included, for example.) We will have to wait for someone with more recent, more technical and more hands-on experience than I to come along and answer this. ---
**Author:** ![Epimetheus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c4cdca/32.png) [@Epimetheus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Epimetheus)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2004, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/14 "2004-10-04T01:04:06Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > Imagine how fast it will run on the 2008 model of the Super-Pentium 800 Turbo Special at 10.5 Thz! Heh, yeah, and we will be flying in space ships to work on the moon and walking around in anti-gravity boots. :rolleyes: Enthusiam is great, just don’t get your head too far in the clouds. Science fiction writers make that error much more often than realists underestimate. > [@](#): > > Interestingly, the closer we get to those limits, the farther away they seem to recede. Simply not true at all. They get frightningly closer every year. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2004, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/15 "2004-10-04T01:17:11Z")
> [@Epimetheus](#): > > Simply not true at all. They get frightningly closer every year. And you, Sir, are a pessimist, while I am an optometrist. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Epimetheus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c4cdca/32.png) [@Epimetheus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Epimetheus)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2004, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/16 "2004-10-04T01:24:24Z")
Actually I am an optimist, a transhumanist and a futurist. I just like to keep it realistic, so as not to be mocked by society at large. 😉 Please, I was exagerating severely with my 10 Ghz personal computer in 10 years, yet you throw in a “prediciton” of a 10 T(era)hz computer in 3 years? How is that optimistic and not just plain improbable? Hey, I will give MODs benifit of the doubt, I can see that it is possible (obviously), and might conceed that it will be sucessfully economically, but lets try not to turn this into fantasy material. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2004, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/17 "2004-10-04T02:25:08Z")
Now, now, **Epimetheus,** I wasn’t making a literal, exact prediction, just a WAG and a humorous toss-away thought. 🙂 Commercial exploitation of the MOD disk is so far ahead, who knows what things will be like in 5-10 years? But now that you asked, assuming Moore’s Law gives us a doubling of processing power every 12-18 months, and assuming the power increase goes entirely into speed, not features, and starting with a 2.66Ghz CPU [now advertised from Gateway,](http://products.gateway.com/products/GConfig/proddetails.asp?system_id=3250s&seg=hm&cmpid=consumer*HOMEPAGE*Billboard*3250S*index~~shtml) in 2005 we should see a 5.32Ghz unit, then around 2007, a 10Ghz one. So put your order in right away; your dream machine is a lot closer than you thought. Extrapolating to a 10Thz unit is a magnitude jump, however, and subject to gross errors. Using simple mathematics, Moore’s Law would suggest it might happen in 10 Moore Cycles (1000=2[sup]10[/sup]), or 10-15 years. However, the 2Mhz Intel 8080, first marketed in 1974, took about 30 years to became the 1000 times faster 2 Ghz Intel Pentium. So I would say the 10Thz CPU might be here in 10-30 years. Bump this thread when it happens, willya? ---
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2004, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/18 "2004-10-04T11:31:49Z")
> [@](#): > > assuming Moore’s Law gives us a doubling of processing power every 12-18 months You guys are mis-representing Moore’s law. (see here for a cite: [http://arstechnica.com/paedia/m/moore/moore-1.html](http://arstechnica.com/paedia/m/moore/moore-1.html) ) While the common news consuming public thinks Moore’s law means everything doubles in 10 to 18 months, it _really_ means “the number of transistors that can be fit onto a square inch of silicon doubles every 12 months.” Taken literally, it means that at the top end of the computing spectrum, your 3 Ghz computer is faster **and cheaper** than your 2.5 Ghz computer you bought last year, but on the low end of the spectrum, your Z80 based Gameboy Advance with backlight, 10 hour battery, and custom case can be sold at a profit for $80. (And your Garmin handheld GPS uses, effectively, an embedded 386 to do it’s dirtywork, and lasts for 36 hours on 4 AA batteries.) What’s my point? You may not ever see that 10 Thz processor, simply because you won’t NEED a 10 Thz processor. (But you may have a chip with 4 5 Thz cores on it.) And your toaster will require 2048 bit encryption and wireless internet access to make sure your bagel is only toasted on one side. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2004, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/move-over-dvds-mods-are-coming/267315/19 "2004-10-04T11:57:05Z")
You’re absolutely right, **Unintentionally Blank** , and of course, Moore’s Law is only an observation. But it has held surprisingly well over some decades. It may not hold forever and the increase in power vs. number of existors may not be a linear progression, either, but it’s fun to speculate. > [@Unintentionally Blank](#): > > You may not ever see that 10 Thz processor, simply because you won’t NEED a 10 Thz processor. And I remember someone saying the world didn’t NEED more than a few computers, either. Let’s revisit this thread in 10 years and see. When come back, bring bagels. 🙂