The average Blu-ray disc holds about 25GB.  A double-sided Blu-ray disc holds 50GB.  The highest-capacity Blu-ray disc (at least that I can find) is TDK’s 200GB DURABIS Blu-ray disc.  However, Japanese scientists are working on a new disc format that will make even the 200GB disc look like nothing.  We’re talking a 5 terabyte, or 5,000 gigabyte, disc made from titanium oxide.

The disc is the brainchild of Shin-ichi Ohkoshi, a chemistry professor at the University of Tokyo.  The secret to titanium oxide’s responsiveness is how it reacts to light, changing from a solid metal to a semiconductor state in the presence of a laser.  The best part is titanium oxide is both cheap and perfectly safe, since it’s in anything from makeup to white paint.

It offers hard drive array size in a single platter!  One disc can store 1000 DVDs including special features, with no compression, no storage issues, and no fuss or muss.  Imagine having an entire DVD collection (plus the collections of 5 or 6 of your closest movie-loving friends) all compressed on one piece of physical media!  Imagine the possibilities this would have for libraries and other digital archivists, or just the incredibly dedicated home collector!

Like a lot of people, I got my Netflix streaming DVD for my Wii today.  I haven’t gotten a chance to play with it much yet, but I’m really looking forward to it when I finally get to hop on the Wii and watch my streaming movies on the tube.  However, since I got my disc, I’m stuck with a quandry… what do I do with it?

Well, a Wii fanatic and Netflix user has actually made his own Netflix on Wii box cover.  You just print it out, slip it into a Wii game case, and presto, you’ve got yourself a Netflix On demand Wii box cover.  The result is pretty impressive, so I suggest you check it out in full size to get the true glory of the impressive image.

If you don’t have any blank Wii disc cases around, you could always recycle one from an older game you don’t play anymore, or have a box as a rotation box for splitting between the Netflix DVD and whatever game you played last.  That’s going to be what I end up doing; while I try not to keep any games in my Wii if I can help it, I do need to put that disc somewhere safe.

Frodo can't believe how mediocre the LOTR Blu-ray picture looks.

The Lord of the Rings Blu-ray discs should be an achievement for the ages.  Combine one of the most impressive visual movies with one of the most impressive, high definition visual physical media ever created, and the results should be phenomenal.  The DVDs themselves looked great, so the Blu-ray should look amazing, right?  Well, if you’re CrunchGear, the answer is… not so much.

A side-by-side comparison of the Blu-ray and televised HD versions of the movie reveal some pretty telling differences.  According to the writer of the article, anyway.  The concensus is somehow, someone messed up the encoding and gave the world an inferior copy of Lord of the Rings versus the broadcast HD, which is just kind of astounding.  Looking at the images presented over at AVS Forum, and I can believe it.

There’s no way the Blu-ray version shouldn’t be significantly better than the HD broadcast version.  Yet here they are, side by side, and if anything the broadcast version looks a little better thanks to not being as overly-processed.  On some things the Blu-ray is better (the title, background definition), but on the important things, it’s a push at best.  Sad, really.

Watch all the videos you want for one low price!  If it sounds like Netflix, that’s because it’s the same business model.  However, Video Mailbox was created by Peter A. Bobley in the late 1980’s!  Rather than DVDs, they used VHS tapes, but the business model was the same:  you pay a monthly subscription fee, you pick a queue of movies, and then you watch them, return them, and repeat the cycle!  Hacking Netflix, one of my favorite new Netflix-related sites, has all the information you need for your 80’s nostalgia trip.  Amazingly, Peter himself shows up in the comment thread to talk about his business venture, which makes for fascinating reading!

Here’s a great site about the history of Video Mailbox, and there’s even a full color brochure the service used to advertise.  There was also a commercial, which you can see below.  Talk about an idea that was years ahead of its time!  Browse and rent from home, massive selection, flat subscription fee, and they even provided the VCR if you didn’t have one!  Crazy how Peter just missed out on the gravy train.

If you’re like me and have been eagerly awaiting the debut of Netflix streaming video on the Wii, you now know when to start getting antsy.  After months of speculation, Netflix will bring its streaming service (via disc ala the PlayStation 3) to the world’s most popular video game console.  I’ve already signed up; go here and get in line with me, won’t you?

The estimated arrival is Spring 2010; that means it’s only a couple of months away!  Huzzah!

As a dedicated fan of Netflix and streaming video on demand in general, this is great.  I’ve been trying to think of a way to get to watch Netflix On Demand in places other than my computer chair, and short of buying a Roku or some other dedicated box, I couldn’t come up with anything besides hooking my laptop to my TV.  Now I won’t have to add something else to my pile of electronics in the entertainment center to get the most out of my Netflix subscription!

When I was in college, there wasn’t much you could do to decorate your dorm room.  A lot of people put up posters, but the really impressive decorations were things like Christmas lights and, if you really wanted to show off, glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling.  The only downfall was that the stars weren’t permanent, and if the glue gave way, you’d be picking stars up off the floor for ages.

These days, with extreme home makeovers being all the rage, a must-have feature for any home theater is a starry sky made out of fiber optic lights.  If you want to make one yourself, but don’t have the budget for a theater makeover, then perhaps these Instructibles directions (complete with pictures) will help you replicate the effect for pennies on the dollar!

It’s a pretty cool effect, but I’d want it to be an actual star map of my area, so that way I could look up at my bedroom ceiling and see the same lights that’d be overhead on a summer night.  Still, it’s great for a kid’s room as a nightlight replacement, isn’t it?

Jacob Yarmuth is probably the biggest sci-fi fan you could ever meet.  That explains why he spent a staggering $70,000 at Visual Concepts in Louisville, Kentucky, to turn his living room into a Stargate-themed home theater.  Given the amount of details worked in by Visual Concepts and Nashville-based partners Sound Answers, that’s an incredibly cheap price for this epic Mona Lisa of personal theaters.

Here’s my question:  they went to great pains to hide the theater’s control system and to secret away all the speakers and whatnot behind panels.  It looks great that way, and if I was going to build one of these, it’s how I’d do it.  That said, why are all the HVAC register grills visible?  I know you can’t block them up, but couldn’t you at least paint them the same color as the walls behind them?  Is this some feature of the base that I’ve never noticed while watching Stargate?

Given that these guys are a local company, I wonder if they’d be willing to put in the home theater system of *my* dreams in exchange for some free blog-based publicity?  Probably not, but it never really hurts to ask, right?  Right.

With the multitude of DVDs, CD, books, and comics that come out every week in stores and on television, it can be hard to keep track of what’s worth watching and what’s worth skipping.  Nobody wants to plunk down hard-earned cash for a lousy CD or a mediocre comic book.  That’s why AJ over at Stalking with the Stars put together a great guide to free, helpful online resources for the pop-culture nerd.

I have to say, I’m a big fan of Fancast, Hulu, and that sort of thing.  I also love sampling the free MP3s from Amazon’s MP3 store; even if I don’t like the song, it’s free!  I’ve never tried imeem, but I’m going to have to give that a shot, too.

Are there any good sources for free stuff, or trial streaming of stuff, that I’m missing out?  The holiday gift season is approaching, so it’s time for me to start with my shopping, and any tips I can get would be greatly appreciated.

I love it when retailers play the “Anything you can do, I can do better” game.  Why?  Because the person who really wins is the consumer, at least when it comes to pricing wars.  For example, Walmart took on Amazon.com’s book prices, and Amazon lowered theirs in response.  Now, Walmart put out a deal where you can preorder their top 10 DVDs for $10, and now Target is taking them on by providing the same deal.  Everyone wins!

Here’s the Walmart selection.  And here’s the Target selection.  There’s no real difference between the two, except the Target top 10 has 11 DVDs listed.  It makes me wonder if the two companies will eventually have different movie offerings, or if it’s the same 10 DVDs for $10 from now until Christmas.

Most importantly, what’s Amazon going to do?  If they match this same deal, that’s an awful lot of copies of G-Force for very little money.

All good things must eventually come to an end.  For those of us who rely on Hulu to catch up on missed TV programs and for entertainment while trapped in our work cubes, it might end up costing a little money come this time next year.  Sadly, the free TV online service has announced plans to roll out a subscription-based option starting sometime in 2010.

Now, that’s not guaranteed to be bad.  If Hulu provides the same amount of advertizing-supported movies and television shows, then I’ll continue to use it.  If they put everything behind the subscription wall, no dice.  I’m used to watching network TV for free thanks to commercials, and the reason why people use Hulu is because it’s network TV for free thanks to commercials.

The fact is, if they make Hulu paid, people are going to stop using it.   I’ll just start using Crackle for my video-watching needs.  While the TV isn’t as good, the movie selection is spectacular.  If I miss an episode of The Office or Family Guy, I’ll just watch them at their respective official network websites.