BLUE LASER TECHNOLOGY

Introduction

A blue laser is a laser with a shorter wavelength than the red laser used in today's

compact disc and laser printer technologies and the ability to store and read two to four

times the amount of data. When available in the marketplace, personal computer users

may be able to buy a laser printer with a resolution up to 2400 pixels or dots per inch at

an affordable price. The same technology in CD and DVD players will provide a

dramatic breakthrough in storage capability without an increase in device size.

A laser (an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation") is a

coherent (meaning all one wavelength, unlike ordinary light which showers on us in

many wavelengths) and focused beam of photons or particles of light. The photons are

produced as the result of a chemical reaction between special materials and then focused

into a concentrated beam in a tube containing reflective mirrors. In the blue laser

technology, the special material is gallium nitride. Even a small shortening of wavelength

of light can have a dramatic effect in the ability to store and access data. A shorter

wavelength allows a single item of data (0 or 1) to be stored in a smaller space.

Red lasers used in today's technologies have wavelengths of over 630 nanometers (or 630

billionths of a meter). The blue laser has a wavelength of 505 nanometers. Recently, a

standard called Blu-ray has been developed for the manufacture of blue laser optical disc

technology. Blu-Ray does not change this. Already there companies which do not agree with

the Blu-Ray Founders. Some of them even presented a new format, making it even more

difficult for the future customer to choose.

HDTV isn’t a very big thing at the moment as well. Although its very high quality of screen

and sound (compared to normal television), the consumers are not very keen on buying them.

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Trustworthiness of Blu-Ray technology also hasn’t been proven yet. If archive and backup

companies are to invest in Blu-Ray as a storage technology, they would like some real

evidence that the data stored on a BD will stay intact for a very long time. Either we are

going to be forced to use the Blu-Ray machines or the companies have to come up with better

explanations why we should be using their technology in the first place.

Basic Blu-ray Disc Characteristics

Large recording capacity up to 27GB: 27GB of data is enough to put 2.5 Hours of HDTV

recording on it. This is more than enough for any average hollywood movie.It also can record

over 13 hours of standard TV Broadcasting using the VHS/standard definition picture

quality,3.8Mbps.

High-speed data transfer rate 36Mbps : Because of its high speed transfer rates it can also

record the data in very little time. In a perfect environment it would take about 2.5 hours to

fill the entire BD with 27 Gigabytes of data. More than enough transfer capacity for real-time

recording and playback. Mind you that this in single speed writing and reading !

The CD-rewriters of todays on CD-ROM are 48 speed, which of course is faster than the Blu-

Ray single speed standard, BUT it wold take more than 40 (!) CD-R's to record 27 Gigabytes.

It would take more than 80 minutes to record or read the data without counting the time you

need to change all those 40 dics.

In addition, by using the random accessing functions on the BD recorder , it is possible to edit

video data captured on a video camera or play back pre-recorded video on the disc while

simultaneously recording images being broadcast on TV.

Blue

Blu-Ray uses a blue laser. Because it uses a blue laser it can store enormous more amounts of

data on it than was ever possible using red laser on the same amount of surface of 120

mmdisc.

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To have an even greater precision and make sure every part of the laserlight actually gets hit

on the part that is needed for writing/reading the disc, a special lens is used in every cd

player.

As perfect as your cd may be the surface is never 100% flat. So it constantly needs to focus to

get the information out). And even IF the surface was 100% flat, the disc spins. And it spins

quite fast! So it can even move up and down a little bit (vibrations)

Applications for the laser

Once considered an esoteric research tool, the laser is now so commonly used it's almost

vanished into the modern technological landscape.

Some of the most important applications include:

Information storage: Lasers read digital data off CDs and DVDs.

Medicine/Dentistry: Surgeons use lasers as scalpels, while ophthalmologists use them to

repair damaged retinas and blood vessels in the eye. Lasers are also used to pulverize

gallstones and clear clogged arteries. Dentists use lasers to drill teeth and harden fillings.

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Military: Laser targeting guides many of the new smart weapons.

Science: Lasers are used to make a variety of ultraprecise measurements and to image

supersmall chemical and biological processes.

Energy: Lasers ignite hydrogen fusion in experimental new reactors that could some day

provide an endlesssource of clean, safe energy.

Agriculture: Surveying and range-finding lasers help ensure farm fields are level and

soil erosion is minimized.

Industry: Lasers are routinely used for heavy cutting and welding. Watchmakers also

use them for precision cuts.

Blue Laser Technology in the IT Infrastructure

Even organizations such as NASA, the Census Bureau, and many others have lost stored

data. While all of these organizations had the right idea by implementing a digital

archive, they forgot one major component: technical evolution. They didn't envision one

or more components becoming obsolete and ultimately affecting the readability of their

data. All organizations, whether archiving for historical preservation or complying with

storage regulations, should avoid using short-term fixes for long-term problems and

should choose a technology with a proven history and a solid growth path to the future.

Singing The Storage Blues

Broad market adoption, a clear technology road map and open format standards are just

some of the key components that should be considered when deciding on an archival

storage system. Organizations that commit to digital archiving should be acutely aware

that they will need to upgrade their storage equipment every 7 to10 years to avoid

equipment obsolescence. The options are simple: spend money on new technology or

refreshing your existing technology-or spend even more money to recover your data and

then upgrade to the new technology.

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120mm red laser optical is the most widely used digital storage medium in the world.

With its genesis back in 1982, we have evolved from CD to DVD (Digital Versatile Disc)

technology, which has opened the removable optical media market to the broadest

number of applications in history. One of the keys to DVD's success is that current DVD

drives are backward compatible and can read CDs. But now, optical manufacturers have

yet another clear migration path. Blue laser optical is just now entering the market,

meaning it's time to prepare to migrate from DVD to Blue Laser optical.

120mm optical is the industry's most solid, reliable choice for preserving precious data.

In fact, in comparing several storage technologies, the National Institute of Standards and

Technology (NIST) concluded that optical media is more stable than digital tape; and

with proper care and handling, DVD optical media should have a lifespan of 30 years.

The Right Stuff

Blue laser optical was not included in the NIST report because it has only recently

emerged. Assuming that it has the same reliability and longevity features of previous

optical technologies, blue laser optical has all "the right ingredients" and then some:

strong interest from multiple industries, future consumer models, an established

technology roadmap through 2007 (with support through 2012) and UDF (universal data

format) support beyond that to ensure readability of the data for years to come.

120mm blue laser optical utilizes a non-abrasive read/write process-it can be safely read

and re-read tens of thousands of times without causing degradation to the media surface.

In addition, new hard coating techniques are providing added protection from dust,

fingerprints and scratches, making bare media solutions a viable, economical option for

many applications that were previously unable to consider optical.

The cost of today's new120mm blue laser-based optical libraries are an average of 30% to

50% lower than even a comparable 130mm cartridge system such as UDO. By utilizing a

120mm cartridge-free media strategy, IT professionals can take advantage of incredible

densities-and eliminate the cost of the cartridge. Media costs will also be reduced as more

disc manufacturers discover that they can produce bare 120mm blue laser media by

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utilizing existing manufacturing facilities that are currently producing other 120mm

formats.

The 130mm format's NA Lens provides major density improvements compared to

the120mm format. In Sony's PDD, for example, the difference is .85 versus .70 for UDO,

providing a much higher density of 23.3GB per side compared to 15GB for UDO-a total

of 64% more storage per side.

Keeping Compliant

In addition to being bombarded with terabytes (TB) of e-mail, E-fax and Instant

Messaging, today's enterprises must comply with new regulatory storage requirements

such as: SEC 17a-4, FDA Rule 21 CFR Part 11, HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley and the Patriot

Act that bring their storage requirements to petabytes (PB) of data each year.

There aren't many enterprise-capacity storage formats out there that can claim a 30-year

history and a solid growth path for another 30 years. Solutions incorporating 120mm blue

laser optical are the next logical evolutionary path, designed to offer an economical,

reliable, standards and regulatory compliant solution that delivers fast, random access to

data stored to durable, removable media.

With more than twice the capacity of red laser optical libraries and data throughput

speeds comparable to tape-based solutions (up to 9MB per second write speeds and

11MB per second read), a single blue laser media cartridge can hold 23.3GB of data-

978,600 x-ray images (at 10MB per image) or the equivalent of up to 2 hours of HDTV

content. Backward read compatible with red-laser DVD-R and DVD-RW formats, the

Blue laser roadmap extends to a 50GB second-generation media, followed by a third-

generation product targeted at 100GB in 2007 with a throughput of up to 43MB per

second.

This next-generation storage solution addresses all the challenges facing IT professionals,

at a cost per Gigabyte that won't alienate the CFO. With the ability to provide unmatched

performance, scalability and flexibility, blue laser-based solutions are uniquely designed

to address the requirements of even the most storage-intensive IT infrastructures.

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Blue laser products

1) laser light with 12 in 1 attachment

Rs. 1.00  (Bids: 0)

Time Left: 22m

2) Four In One Pen, Laser pointor, LED Light and Pointer

TELESCOPIC POINTER FOR PRESENTATIONS WITH LASER 

Feedback:  (6) 100%

Rs. 375.00

Time Left: 1h 47m

3) HP Laserjet 1022N Network Ready Mono Laser Printer

Rs. 16,840.00 Time Left: 4h 53m

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4) HP Color Laserjet 2600N Netowrk Ready Laser Printer

 

Rs. 20,976.00

Time Left: 4h 53m

5) HP Color Laserjet 2550LN Netowrk Ready Laser Printer

Rs. 35,810.00

Time Left: 4h 53m

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6) HP Color Laserjet 3600 Laser Printer

Rs. 31,444.00

Time Left: 4h 53m

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Blue Laser Design offers:

Custom Logo Design

Discounted Available Web Site Designs up to 15% off

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Prompt, friendly, professional assistance

Personal assistance before, during and after your web site development project

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Only the services you need; no additional charges for options that will not be

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Update your own site easily (content management)

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Hosting, Domain Name, Email Accounts & Statistics All for $10 per month

Optical storage sings the blues

Conventional optical technologies such as CD, DVD and magneto-optical (MO) drives

write data using red lasers. But makers of storage systems and recording media are

developing ways to read and write using more efficient blue lasers. Because these lasers

operate at shorter optical wavelengths, they can write more data in the same space and

write and read data faster than devices that use red lasers.

Sony Corp. led the way when a consortium it founded last fall announced Blu-ray, a

technology that can write 25GB of data on a DVD-size disc (a standard DVD holds

4.7GB). And Cambridge, England-based Plasmon PLC is already shipping a first-

generation blue-laser disc drive that boosts the capacity of a 5.25-in. optical disc from

9.1GB to 30GB. Plasmon says the price per gigabyte of its drive is 80% lower than the

prices of products based on conventional red-laser MO technology.

Competing Camps

Most of the buzz about blue-laser technology has focused on the consumer electronics

market, where blue-laser discs are seen as a successor to DVDs. The devices could also

be used for backing up desktop PCs or archiving audio, video and image files.

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Two industry groups are promoting incompatible formats: Blu-ray Disc Founders, a

consortium of Japanese companies led by Sony and recently joined by Hewlett-Packard

Co. and Dell Inc.; and the DVD Forum, led by Toshiba Corp. and NEC Corp.

The high-definition DVD (HD-DVD) standard promoted by the DVD Forum is an

extension of red-laser technology that uses the same disc form as conventional DVDs.

Designed to maintain backward compatibility with existing DVD media, it uses the same

bonded-disc structure as the current red-laser DVD and sandwiches the recording layer

between two 0.6mm-thick plastic layers. A single-layer read-only disc has a capacity of

15GB, and a dual-layer disc supports 30GB.

The Blu-ray standard represents a more radical departure

from the existing DVD format. While the disc is the same

size as a DVD, the recording layer sits on the surface of a

1.1mm substrate and is protected by a special coating. A

single-layer BD-ROM, as the Blu-ray Disc Founders call it, will hold 25GB—67% more

than an HD-DVD—and a dual-layer disc will hold 50GB.

Mike Fidler, a senior vice president at Sony, says the company will have Blu-ray media

in both write-once and rewritable formats by year's end and will ship a Blu-ray disc

player by the end of 2005. Blu-ray in PCs will follow roughly the same schedule, he

predicts. "HP and Dell look at this from both the entertainment and data-storage

perspectives," he says.

Disc Economics

The price of Blu-ray and HD-DVD drives and media will eventually come down to the

levels of today's red-laser devices and media, analysts say, but users will see a much

lower net cost per gigabyte of data stored. And that cost will continue to fall as storage

Plasmon's UDO drive

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densities increase. Today, however, Sony Blu-ray recorders, which are available only in

Japan, sell for $2,700. Discs are $23 each.

It's not clear which format will ultimately prevail. HD-DVD has lower capacity but is less

costly to manufacture because discs can be made using existing DVD production

equipment. Blu-ray proponents counter that although their manufacturing processes must

be changed more radically, it will be cheaper in the long run to make a Blu-ray disc than

an HD-DVD.

Right now, PC users may want to place their bets with Blu-ray, since it's the only blue-

laser format to be endorsed by major PC makers so far.

For storage administrators who care more about data archiving than about downloading

high-definition television footage, other blue-laser technologies are emerging. For years,

companies in industries such as financial services, health care, insurance and publishing

have chosen optical media for archiving because they're extremely reliable and long-

lived. And because they can't be erased or rewritten, optical media meet the most

stringent government requirements for records retention.

When it comes to enterprise storage, the amount of data stored on optical media will

remain a tiny fraction of the amount stored on magnetic media for the foreseeable future,

says Peter Gere, an analyst at Enterprise Storage Group Inc. in Milford, Mass. But he

predicts that the cost advantage of blue-laser media will feed a surge in popularity for

write-once, read-many optical storage in the wake of new regulations and recent litigation

related to data archiving.

"IT managers are hypersensitive to the risks associated with poor records management,

and optical storage is the poster child for long-term data retention," Gere says. "It may

not be the fastest or the most cost-effective, but it is the best media right now in terms of

ensuring long-term data retention." Plasmon's blue-laser Ultra Density Optical (UDO)

technology "has really given optical a new life," he adds.

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Optical storage is likely to remain somewhat more costly than other technologies, Gere

says. "But you are paying not only for longevity, but also for something magnetic media

can't provide, which is immutability," he adds.

Archiving Applications

UDO drives and media represent another application of blue lasers, one designed

specifically for professional data-archive applications. UDO systems use the same 5.25-

in. disc format as conventional MO libraries, but they use blue lasers and can store 3.3

times more data than MO discs can. Plasmon calls UDO a successor to MO. However,

UDO is all-optical, whereas MO discs support magnetic storage on one side and optical

on the other.

Although developed and promoted by Plasmon, the UDO specification was formally

published and adopted in January by Ecma International's TC31 Technical Committee.

Ecma is an industry association based in Geneva.

Although Plasmon sells DVD drives and media, Dave DuPont, Plasmon's marketing vice

president, says DVDs in red- or blue-laser formats will see very little corporate use

because they're more fragile and less reliable than UDO. "We are finding customers are

unhappy with DVD because because it was never really designed as a professional

archival technology," he says. "All the people we talk to want to move away from DVD

because the media is of uncertain quality."

Plasmon announced that HP will use UDO drives and media in StorageWorks optical

libraries.

The 5.25-in. blue-laser format will gain popularity because of its cost advantages over

red-laser MO discs, says DuPont. A new market is emerging as companies and

government agencies demand a way to store surveillance-camera images for long periods

of time, not just for a few days, as was common before the recent rise of terrorism, he

says.

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Digital Storage Solutions, an imaging systems reseller and service bureau in Brentwood,

N.Y., scans documents for clients and archives the data to DVD or MO. Paul Greene,

director of the company's storage division, says he'll migrate to UDO, probably this year.

Traditionally, MO has been geared to professional archiving, and CD and DVD have

been geared to consumer markets because the cost is so much lower than for MO," he

says. "Now, with UDO, you get a much higher capacity per disc plus much higher

reliability because it's a jacketed media."

Greene says a complete UDO system—including the library, media, magazines for

handling the media, software and maintenance contract—will cost just slightly more than

a DVD storage system. "You may pay 10% more upfront, but that's spread over the life

of the system, and you get much more reliability and longevity," he says.

One of Greene's customers, a service bureau, put in two Plasmon UDO jukeboxes a

month ago and has seen flawless performance so far, he says. The Plasmon units relace

IBM jukeboxes based on 5.2GB MO discs. The service bureau's eight jukebox units filled

quickly, and they have been expanded from 1.3TB each to 19TB each, Greene says. And,

he adds, the customer gained about 30% in read and write speeds over MO.

Sony recently announced its own line of 5.25-in. blue-laser drives and media, called

Professional Disc for Data (PDD), but Plasmon is the clear leader in this market, Gere

says. HP and IBM use UDO in their storage systems, and Plasmon and HP have 94% of

the optical library market. So far, only Sony supports PDD. "I'd say PDD is a niche

product for those that are loyal Sony customers," says Gere. "I don't see any major

systems vendors lining up to support PDD."

Comparing CD, DVD and BDEmerging blue-laser technology will increase storage density by a factor of five over

traditional media. The photos below show how data is stored on a CD, a traditional DVD

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(center) and a Blu-ray disc (right). A competing standard, HD-DVD, can hold about four

times as much data as today's DVDs.

Conclusion

Blu-Ray is very cool technology. It takes the DVD-Technology one step further, basically

by just using a smaller laser with a nice color.Whether the world is ready for Blu-Ray

Discs, Recorders and Players remains to be seen.The DVD has gained in popularity, but

the various formats and sizes have made the professional user of DVD-recorders gone

mad already. The same technology in CD and DVD players will provide a dramatic

breakthrough in storage capability without an increase in device size.

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