Tech Support: What's up With AVCHD? (page 2)
Laser Recording on Magnetic Drives
Regarding the story, "Migrating Your Tapes to Digital" in the June issue. At the bottom of p 48, the statement is made, "The drives will use laser light to switch the polarity of the magnetic media, a feat long thought impossible."
Au contraire, this technology is well known and has been used in the Sony MiniDisc recorder for the last 15 years or so. The laser is GaAlAs operating at 790nm. Sony calls it Magneto Optical, MO, technology for digital recording of audio. Perhaps the use of a blue laser will allow video recording.
John Dickens
The drives in question use a technology that's a little different than MO, which has been in use for a long time. This new technology will not involve magnetism. But the new technology is a way out-the physics are proving to be quite a challenge, but not insurmountably so, from what we've been reading. (Put "laser hard drive" in your favorite Web search engine for more details.)
As for blue laser video recording- we still don't know why, exactly, no manufacturers have marketed a set-top Blu-ray Disc recorder yet. The Hollywood content cabal probably has something to do with that, though.
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-The Editors
