DVDs could be making a comeback after boffins created a disc that holds 220,000 films.
A standard single-layer DVD can store up to 4.7 GB of data.
This is approximately three hours of video footage – enough for one movie.
But, researchers in China, have been developing a new type of disc.
This contains a petabyte of data.
According to researchers, this is the equivalent of more than 220,000 regular DVDs.
They contain encoded data which “lands” on the disc’s surface.
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DVD players use a laser to read the data on the surface of the disc.
Many discs are ‘single-layered’, but double-layered DVDs are also available.
These have 8.5 GB of data and store up to four hours of video footage.
DVDs can be available in up to four layers.
However, the new disk now contains 100 layers – significantly increasing video time and storage.
The study was led by Miao Zhao of the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics.
The team added a unique coating that allowed the etching of data at a much smaller scale.
But they say the super-DVD is not ready to be widely used just yet.
This is because the writing of the disc uses a lot of energy.
The team of researchers insist that the issues can be solved and the disc can be used to store data in the near future.
The study reads: ”We increase the capacity of [optical data storage] to the petabit level by extending the planar recording architecture to three dimensions with hundreds of layers, meanwhile breaking the optical diffraction limit barrier of the recorded spots.”
It adds: “This technology makes it possible to achieve exabit-level storage by stacking nanoscale disks into arrays, which is essential in big data centres with limited space.”
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