Re: [AV Media Matters] Anyone have opinions or hard information on

[Ulrich Sieveking <sieveking@sahl.de>]

rohre@ARLUT.UTEXAS.EDU schrieb:
>My understanding is Super DLT is not one product, but a collection of
>technologies that may be applied to a DLT product.
>
>Does anyone have any firm information on there being a new model DLT tape
>recorder in progress, and especially when will it be ready, given the
delays
>in other recorder new models?

Super DLT is an extension to the already existing DLT standard. Its
proponents and the future manufacturers of Super DLT drives claim, that
it will significantly improve upon 'normal' DLT in terms of capacity and
throughput. Something resembling a roadmap can be seen on
http://www.dlttape.com/About/university/u17.asp (btw. www.dlttape.com is
the official source for information about DLT in general).
This means that there will be new media and new drives, which should be
backwards compatible with existing media (i.e. older media can be read
from and written to using Super DLT drives just like DDS-n).

However, I don't see any of these drives in the market now and I don't
expect them to be generally available and usable before the first or
second quarter of 2001 given the usual delays between announcement and
availability of any IT-related product. At the moment it is also nearly
impossible to get anything other than marketing-biased press releases or
statements of intention from Quantum or Tandberg.

Even if this looks very promising for e.g. uncompressed digital video
storage, I doubt that Super DLT will improve in reliability and
especially long term storage stability, because it is too much driven by
the IT market, which needs high capacity but has no interest in shelf
life. The ongoing quest to obey Moore's law even in magnetic media seems
to forbid thinking about long term stability while we're all going to
even higher data densities per area. Or to put it frankly: Digital
information lasts forever or five years - whichever comes next.

I hope this was of any help.
Corrections, comments and discussion are always welcome,

Greetings,
G. W. Ulrich Sieveking

sahl computer AG
Bauernfeld 4
D-86165 Augsburg
Deutschland
e-mail: sieveking@sahl.de
Telephon: +49-821-72044-0
Fax: +49-821-721548