[AV Media Matters] FMD vs DVD

[Jim Wheeler <Jimwheeler@aol.com>]

DVD is still in its infancy and it already has a challenger--FMD!

BYTE has an article about it on their website and I have reproduced
it below.

For more details, go to the Constellation 3D website at:
www.c-3D.net

FMD stands for Fluorescent Multilayer Disc.

I will remain skeptical until I see a proven production product.  I
have seen many prototypes work great in the lab but never were
reproducible (reliably) in production.

Jim Wheeler

Hello FMD-ROM -- Bye-Bye DVD?
By Andy Patrizio, Byte.com
Feb 21, 2000

You know that nice, shiny new DVD player you got for Christmas? The one that
plays all the real sharp-looking movies? It's already as obsolete as
eight-track tape. After a five-year effort, Constellation 3D is in the final
development stages of its FMD-ROM drive. The FMD-ROM disc uses a radically
different means of reading the disc that allows discs with 10 or even 100
layers of data. By contrast, CD-ROM has one layer and DVD-ROM has two. The
capacity potential for the first-generation of FMD-ROM is up to 140 GBs of
storage, almost 15 times the capacity of a dual-layer DVD-ROM disc.

The limitation of DVD-ROM is that the solid, reflective layer where data is
stored in pits or dots, causes the laser to be diffused when it penetrates
the first layer to read the second layer. In going through the first layer
twice, once to read and then back out, the signal is absorbed and lost. This
makes adding a third or more layers impossible, as the laser signal is lost.

FMD-ROM uses a totally clear disc, and instead of reading a layer, it looks
for fluorescent materials in the layers, which give off light. The existence
or non-existence of these materials tell the drive whether there is
information there or not, so the whole system has much greater tolerance for
multiple layers, according to Patrick Maloney, senior vice president of
business development for Constellation 3D, based in New York.

"There's no absorption of the light coming back out, so that means no limit
on the layers," he said. "We simply focus on the layer we want to read." The
drive can also read multiple layers at the same time. With no real limit on
the number of layers, Constellation 3D is hoping to reach a terabyte of
capacity within two to three years, he said.

In a throwback to the DIVX days, the media is also intelligent, and the
company is building in technology that will let content resellers, such as
movie studios, limit the number of times the disc can be accessed. FMD-ROM
would also have a different copy-protection scheme, which will keep out the
DeCSS crowd.

The media will cost around $2 per disc, in bulk, and the drives will be
comparable to DVD-ROM drives on the market now, which start around $100. The
FMD-ROM disc will transfer data at least as fast as DVD-ROM, which transfer
at a rate of 10 megabits per second, and can go up to 100Mbits/sec, he said.
It would also be backward compatible with DVD-ROM and CD-ROM discs.

In addition to the five-inch disc, Constellation 3D is working on a
card-sized unit with a square chip on it, similar to the blue
American Express card that comes with a chip on it. This chip would
have a capacity of 4.7 GBs, enough to hold a movie, but would be the
size of a credit card.

The first generation of FMD-ROM drives and card would be read-only,
but the company says it hopes to release recordable FMD technology
for both the disc and card by the end of 2001. The current
production plan is to begin production on a mass scale in Q1 of 2001
and be in full production by 2Q, according to Maloney. Constellation
3D will license the technology to any optical drive manufacturer,
like Ricoh, Matsushita and Fujitsu, and says it has talked with both
electronics manufacturers as well as movie studios about the
technology, but won't say which companies are interested.

That will be the real challenge for the company, to establish partnerships
with the industry, one that makes a very good living off CD-ROM and DVD,
according to one analyst. "They are still a small company and they have to
work hard to establish the technology with partners," said Wolfgang
Schlichting, research manager for optical storage at International Data
Corp.
"The optical-storage industry has a lot of momentum with CD and DVD."

"I am most excited about the memory card product," added Schlichting. "It
gives you a very efficient capacity on a very small form factor." DVD, he
said, has a lot of momentum and the current technology is sufficient.
"There's not too much advantage of putting 100 movies on one disc. Who would
pay for the content anyway?"

www.cmpnet.com
The Technology Network
Copyright 1998 CMP Media Inc.
URL: http://www.byte.com/feature/BYT20000218S0003

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