I was wondering if anyone was using or offering Cranberry discs to deliver wedding projects?

What do you think?

Cranberry DiamonDisc(tm) - The 1,000 Year DVD (http://cranberry.com/index.php)

Wow...that's EXPENSIVE! I can't burn my own discs (unless I purchase a $1,500 burner), $35 per disc, bundles of software and monthly services. IDK...sounds like a rip-off. Maybe not, but how are any of us to know that these things will really last for 10 centuries??

Also, Blu-Ray will soon be the standard IMHO. Are these discs compatible with a BD player?

It's a gimmick, but then I could see offering it to clients as your own money making gimmick.

Here's an article from Wired Magazine (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/diamonddisc-stone-dvds-will-last-1000-years/) that makes a good point - when CDs first came out, they were ballyhooed as "indestructible" and would "last forever". I don't see the "DiamondDisc" claims as having any more credence than the original CD claims.

Yeah, it almost borders on a scam. And they don't (probably can't) offer Blu-Rays. I wonder if they are more scratch resistant too? Although that's a human error to get a scratch.

What's it cost to get a few discs pressed at a disc production house?

As far as playback in 1,000 years, you will probably be able to just snap a picture of an optical disc with the then current iphones mega resolution camera and grab all the data without even having a currently thought of player.

What's it cost to get a few discs pressed at a disc production house?

I've never seen replication offered for quantities less than 300.

Maybe that's an alternate selling point for my services.

Genuine pressed commercial quality DVDs, supplied in a spindle of 300 copies.

Maybe not.

Also, as technology advances we'll have access to equipment that can read "unreadable" discs. No fear.

As far as playback in 1,000 years, ......
Does anyone remember the VHS tape ad with the skeleton? Lasts for ever they said - already I can't even remember the brand.

Memorex it was - Deryck Guyler did the V/O.

And my Memorex VHS tapes still play fine :-)

All my audio tape cassetes from the 70s still work too (a wee bit of print through now and again) so I think I'll continue to archive my video on dv tape while it's still available.

Also, as technology advances we'll have access to equipment that can read "unreadable" discs. No fear.

Good point. It reminds me of the very first "recording" - made 17 years before Edison's "Mary Had A Little Lamb". Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville was a printer and a tinkerer who was experimenting with converting audio to etchings on charcoal paper - the very first waveforms. Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory took those etchings and converted them to sound. Scott had no clue he was recording his voice for all posterity to hear. You can hear the recording at the link below:

LINK (http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/03/27/the-first-audio-recording-1860-optical)

I think I'll continue to archive my video on dv tape while it's still available.

My confidence level in tape as an archival medium is zero. I have projects that I archived on tape (Sony's best) just 5 years ago (stored in a controlled/cool/dry environment) that I can't recapture.

During recapture I get a few seconds of video, then blue screen, then a few seconds of video, then blue screen, etc.,) I know at the time I archived these projects I tested playback. Luckily, I didn't trust tape for storage and used a secondary method (hard drive).

With respect, that sounds like there is a problem with your equipment (or was when you recorded the tapes) as even those who are not particularly fond of tapes do not usually report wholesale failure as a reason. HD dropouts we have all heard of, individual tape failures perhaps, but there is clearly another issue here. (Cleaning or alignment of heads?)

Colin: I agree Craig probably has or had an equipment problem, and that is a major weak link with tape. I have tapes that probably still work fine for my old DV and HDV cameras, but no longer have the cameras. I would consider that an equipment problem too.

Jeff

Tape head alighment issues - the data is probably still there IF it was properly stored and hasn't been damaged (look for crinkled edges) by being run through an out of alignment camera...

I'll have to dig out some old recorded DVD's and see if they still work after being stored in a cool dark dry environment... got me curious! I'm pretty sure that ANY media can go bad if you look for a way!

Proper storage and backup solves the problems - I know I've got lots of old stuff stuck on my hard disks - it's easy to just copy the entire contents' of last years "biggest drive" to a small portion of THIS year's biggerer drive...

Also, as technology advances we'll have access to equipment that can read "unreadable" discs. No fear.

I suppose anything is possible, but seriously doubt that a burned DVD disk will be recoverable years and years later after laser rot. The material that is recorded on is organic and the recording literally decomposes.

There is a definite limit to "recovery" of lost data, no matter WHAT the media involved, that is why the term "BACKUP" becomes an important issue. Anyone who's ever had a hard disk go out knows the terror involved - "what files are on THAT disk?" "where did my stuff go?", etc... Victims of disasters know a fire or a flood or other weather can wipe out everything in it's path... there's a disk recovery site that has some amazing pix of what they've successfully recovered from computers after "total" disasters...

I've recovered a few hard disks with issues myself, but the 1's and 0's must still be there and not overwritten or "faded to obscurity".

My understanding of the issues with burned disks is that the burnable layer just sort of "fades out" as it ages, meaning you may as well have a disk of "2's". My thinking is that this is no different from a photo (or a piece of furniture or anything else!) left out and exposed to light/heat cycles over time. These disks are also read by a laser, AKA light/heat... ANY media can and will degrade over time when exposed to the "wrong" conditions.

It's a part of life that things wear out, go out of tolerance, break and generally fall apart eventually. The best one can do is try to keep the degradation to a minimum and backup your ones and zeros on a semi regular basis... Your odds improve if you've got dual or triple redundancy and preferably an offsite backup solution if your data is really valuable.