Some researchers at Pioneer now designed a Blu-Ray disc with 16 layers with 25GB each, giving us a total of 400GB on only 1 single disc!! As it seems the procedure isn't very stable yet, and it's not sure if current players like the PS3 can read these discs after a software update.

But that's what I call good news, although traditional HDDs of that size might be a little cheaper
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Would be nice if current BD players could read these larger discs through a software update, but I doubt it.

Imagine what the possibilities are, though: near-uncompressed video and audio, nearly boundless storage capacity for game data. Whoever said dual layer DVDs were plenty enough for the forseeable future must've been living under a rock.
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With 400GB of storage space, will mailtrading/swapping like in the old days of the Scene finally re-emerge from its sleep?
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Bill Gates?
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Blue Jedi?
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That is a good point. Near uncompressed video and audio would be amazing. However it would be very costly from the disc creators due to the added investment needed in hardware to create such discs, and the limited market for them due to compatibility.

If however they can make current BR players read these large multi layer discs than it would be amazing. Games stored on 400GB discs would give the developers amazing scope for content including a ton of pre-rendered HD footage and multi channel audio.

At the moment I seem to remember reading that standard BR drives are designed to read up to 4 layers so it might not be possible with current drives. However, even with 4 layers that is 100GB per disc.

With DVD and even CD mailtraiding/swapping has still been going very well, especially with Rom Burners who provide copies of the latest Retro collections such as MAME. It has however dropped a lot since broadband became more commonplace and p2p, especially Bit Torrent, became commonplace. However I agree. Even with standard 50GB writeable Bluray discs it is much easier to transfer such amounts of data on a single disc than it is via the internet.
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If DVDs still aren't outselling Blu-Ray by Xmas 2009 I will be VERY surprised.

EDIT: Make that Xmas 2010
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HDTV sales are accelerating quickly, and the prices of LCD HDTVs is falling very quickly. You can now get a decent 32" for £400, and a 42" for just over £500. Amazing compared to prices just a year ago.

Although for a true 1080p resolution set a 32" is still just over £600 and a 42" over £750. Still, even those prices are much lower than even a few months ago.
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April last year I bought my 720p (1280x720) Hitachi 42" Plasma Panel for £620 (which included 19%VAT AND delivery from france )

well worth it... retr0 gaming heaven i tells ya!
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That's true. I bought my 40" 1080p set in March last year, and it cost over £2.000. It was the best set you could get at the time according to all the tests, but even so it is lacking in some areas compared to recent sets so that I've been thinking about replacing it allready. But I'd have to take a huge loss selling it, so I'm a little hesitant.
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