PS4 to Dump Blu-Ray for Holography?
As ever, rumours are still moving around the net about the arrival of a PS4 in a couple of years time. No official specs or even a mention have been found yet except for a few comments made by Sony people saying the expect there to be more and more playstations over the years.
The next question asks if Sony will dump blu-ray in favour of holography. Some content over on the NY Times recently indicated that GE were researching storage capacity on holographic disks (HVD). The technology has been around a few years but isn’t yet available on the market. A theoretical 3.9 TB of data could be stored if the companies working on it get it right. Given those numbers and the time left until a PS4 launch (2012 at a guess) it would appear that HVD’s might be the way forwards.
“This could be the next generation of low-cost storage,” said Richard Doherty, an analyst at Envisioneering, a technology research firm.
As of now the technology is expensive, but given a few years and a lot more research we could see prices drop to a more normal and acceptable level.
As well as being capable of playing HVD’s it would be possible to be backwards compatible too making all your old DVD’s and Blu-Ray discs compatible. This would add convenience to the system while allowing the limits to be pushed on the cutting edge games of the new generation.
Of course you also have to wonder if the PS4 will completely do away with an optical drive and go based on downloadable content only. With Virgin Media testing 200 Meg connections at the moment in the UK there might not even be a need for optical storage on the device (although we do understand that not every country would have access to fast connections).
