toward lower cost holographic data storage

The first generation of mobile holodisks and drives, recently launched, are quite expensive. Nonetheless, it is vital to remember that CDs and DVDs, and the drives that read them, were also very costly at first. They did, in contrast, come down in price and are currently very available to consumers. As holographic information storage and holographic drives progress and drop in price, they will likely supplant DVDs as the predominant medium for games and movies. Already, the prices of essential components of holotechnology data storage, such as lasers, Lcompact disk displays, and Ccompact disk sensing devices, are dropping in price. In fact, researchers at MIT are working toward inventing holotechnology video systems that are compatible with standard PCs and would only cost a few hundred dollars. Link to Three Dimensional Imagery's Hologram Production Lab provides more information on this topic.

CDs, DVDs, and magnetic storage record information as individual bits across the top of the storage media. In contrast, Holotech data storage saves information permeating the three- dimensional thickness of recordable media. Holotech data storage and extraction systems also create the opportunity for massive parallelism in recording and playback because such systems save and read complete pages (up to millions of bits) at a time instead of linear sequences of information bits. Investigators have been pursuing holographic information storage systems for many years. However, it has only been during recent years that vital discoveries in materials and technologies have made them cost effectively possible. For instance, somewhat low-cost liquid crystal image projections and integrated circuits have helped to reduce the price of holographic data storage. There is considerable research underway by a quantity of research laboratories toward the consumer marketization of volumetric holographic digital data storage. Virtual Dancing also covers holotech related topics.

See Holographic DVDs for expanded material about holotechnology.