Four formats on a single disc?

Does riding the DVD/HD DVD/Blu-ray Roller Coaster of Consumer Confusion make you queasy? Supporting three formats is giving the movie studios indigestion, but so far they haven't found the right antacid. It costs time and money to produce discs in multiple formats, and it takes a valuable shelf space at retail. Surely there must be a better solution than selling three kinds of discs and three kinds of players?

Talk of a hybrid player that could handle both new high-def formats set the tech world buzzing when the chipset was demonstrated early this year, but hardware based on it has yet to materialize. The other approach, making hybrid discs, has so far produced only HD DVD/DVD hybrids. While HD DVD and traditional DVD share enough in common to make the manufacturing processes similar, Blu-ray requires an expensive technology upgrade.

The basic problem is that the different technologies use different types of lasers and store data at different depths. Traditional DVDs use a 650nm red laser, while Blu-ray and HD DVD both use a blue laser at 405nm. DVD and HD DVD share the same data depth, though, at 0.6mm, while Blu-ray's pits are only 0.1mm from the surface.

A recent patent unearthed by New Scientist suggests that Warner has seen the hybrid future and could one day produce discs featuring all three formats, plus CD.

The patent, which lists several top Warner execs as the inventors, describes how "a dual disc may also be formed with two high-capacity data layers, one conforming to the HD DVD format and the other conforming to the BD [Blu-ray disc] format." Warner engineers have figured out a way to use semireflective coatings to allow the two layers to coexist on a single side, using HD DVD's greater depth to position it beneath the Blu-ray data layer.

The patent then describes an implementation in which both sides of the disc contains data layers, which means that we could see discs with CD and DVD layers on one side, HD DVD and Blu-ray on the other. The downside to this approach is that each format gets only one layer, reducing its total capacity. Discs are not especially expensive to produce, so it may make financial sense for studios to begin shipping two-disc movies that contain all three formats. While this would simplify things for consumers and would free up valuable shelf space, it would also make it hard to offer different price points for DVD and high-definition formats. It might well make more sense for studios to release DVD editions in one box, high-definition versions (Blu-ray on one side, HD DVD on the other) in another.

Intel pioneers silicon laser technology

Technology is advancing to a point where copper connections over small distances cannot achieve throughputs needed for high-performance computing. The electrical characteristics of wire at these high frequencies usually cause more problems that it's worth. In order to expand bus transmission rates to a terabit scale, optical connections are necessary. However, photonic semiconductor components have traditionally been expensive and difficult to manufacture in high volume. This is why most fiber-optic equipment is expensive and only used when transmission distances make it more costly to use copper. This is why you'd never see an optical bus in many high performance computing scenarios, let alone someone's desktop.

Intel has been working on ways to solve these problems and through a partnership with the University of California Santa Barbara, they've achieved a method of producing components using standard semiconductor processes that are reliable and cost-effective. They call this technology hybrid silicon lasers. A hybrid silicon laser is a laser that small enough to be built on modern electronic scales (nanometers) and allows for the conversion of electronic signals into highly efficient optical signals.

There are two components to a hybrid silicon laser. The first is a material that, when a charge is placed across it, emits photons. In this instance, Intel is using Indium(III) phosphide. The second component is a substrate of silicon that acts as a waveguide. Depending on how this silicon waveguide is designed, it will affect certain characteristics of the laser's output, such as wavelength. Previously, these two components had to be aligned precisely in a process that was costly and time-consuming. In Intel's new method, the two materials are coated with a thin layer of oxygen plasma and bonded at around 300°C. This creates a layer of what is essentially glass that bonds these two components together. What is important to note, however, is that via this process, the two layers no longer need to be precisely aligned, removing the expensive barriers to mass-production.

This means that bandwidth-intensive subsystems of large computing projects such as supercomputers, and someday high-performance workstations can have their copper bus architectures replaced with efficient optical versions. This would remove many of the limiting characteristics of copper technology which becomes increasingly bothersome at the frequencies involved in high bandwidth operations. This new technology will expand data rates between components dramatically. Intel has demonstrated a silicon-based optical modulator operating in excess of 1GHz while other researchers have demonstrated data transmission rates as high was 160Gb/s. Intel is optimistic that these technologies can expand to "terabit" level connections in the future.

Apple iPhone Clues in iTunes 7

An Apple analyst said Friday there is further proof the computer company will soon make its own iTunes-enabled cell phone.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in a research note, “We believe there is more tangible evidence of the existence of the iPhone from the resource files in the new iTunes 7.” He was referring to reports that the latest iTunes software, which was released Tuesday, has messages that suggest features for a mobile phone, such as messages about copying games and synching photos to mobile phones.

Mr. Munster said such features are not on the ROKR phone that was jointly developed by Apple and Motorola and released last October. “This resource file message suggests there will be a phone that will be capable of synching with iTunes, and that the phone will support iTunes and photos,” Mr. Munster said in the report. He added, “We believe this phone is most likely the iPhone, with an outside chance the message is in reference to an upcoming phone from a current phone manufacturer.”

The evidence, rather than the revelation of a phone, is what’s more compelling here. Indeed, UBS analyst Benjamin Reitzes said in a research note Tuesday that he is “still expecting new products in the coming months… including touch-screen video iPods with larger screens and cell phones.”

What’s more, talk of a phone made by Apple has been on the lips of observers for more than a year. Some believed the ROKR was deliberately made clunky—it’s an old-school candy-bar style with room for just 100 tracks—so that Apple could later offer an improved model.

Others believe that due to the extremely enthusiastic following of Apple fans, the Cupertino, California-based company could become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), selling its phones as well as Apple-branded cellular service.