Now, an optical disc that can store 500GB of data

London, April 28 (ANI): The General Electric (GE) company has unveiled a disc that can store 500 gigabytes (GB) of data, equivalent to 100 DVDs.

According to a report by BBC News, the micro-holographic disc, which is the same size as existing DVD discs, is aimed at the archive industry.

But, GE believes it can eventually be used in the consumer market place and home players.

Blu-ray discs, which are used to store high definition movies and games, can currently hold between 25GB and 50GB.

Micro-holographic discs can store more data than DVDs or Blu-ray because they store information on the disc in three dimensions, rather than just pits on the surface of the disc.

The challenge for this area of technology has been to increase the reflectivity of the holograms that are stored on the discs so that players can be used to both read and write to the discs.

Brian Lawrence, who leads GE's Holographic Storage said on the GE Research blog: "Very recently, the team at GE has made dramatic improvements in the materials enabling significant increases in the amount of light that can be reflected by the holograms."

The higher reflectivity that can be achieved, the more capacity for the disc.

While the technology is still in the laboratory stage, GE believes it will take off because players can be built which are backwards compatible with existing DVD and Blu-ray technologies.

In a statement, the firm said, "The hardware and formats are so similar to current optical storage technology that the micro-holographic players will enable consumers to play back their CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs."

"GE's breakthrough is a huge step toward bringing our next generation holographic storage technology to the everyday consumer," said Lawrence in a statement.

"The day when you can store your entire high definition movie collection on one disc and support high resolution formats like 3D television is closer than you think," he added.

"This is truly a breakthrough in the development of the materials that are so critical to ultimately bringing holographic storage to the everyday consumer," said Lawrence. (ANI)