Sony and Panasonic Develop New Optical Storage Standard

[TOMPPIX]

Sony Corporation and Panasonic Corporation today announced that they have formulated "Archival Disc", a new standard for professional-use, next-generation optical discs, with the objective of expanding the market for long-term digital data storage.

 

Optical discs have excellent properties to protect themselves against the environment, such as dust-resistance and water-resistance, and can also withstand changes in temperature and humidity when stored. They also allow inter-generational compatibility between different formats, ensuring that data can continue to be read even as formats evolve. This makes them robust media for long-term storage of content. Recognizing that optical discs will need to accommodate much larger volumes of storage going forward, particularly given the anticipated future growth in the archive market, Sony and Panasonic have been engaged in the joint development of a standard for professional-use next-generation optical discs.

 

 

Roadmap

Both Sony and Panasonic aim to launch systems with a recording capacity of 300 GB per disc from summer 2015, onwards. In addition, both companies plan to leverage their respective technologies to further expand the recording capacity per disc to 500 GB and 1 TB.

 

 

SOURCE

[MagnetSh0CK]

Oh god here comes the second wave of storing all of your torrents physically...

[bcredeur97]

300 GB write once? whats the point of that?

[Testmann]

300 GB write once? whats the point of that?

Them uncompressed movies!

[bcredeur97]

Them uncompressed movies!

disks also get scratched up.... I dont think they are suitable for long term storage. and not to mention its not hard to break one either.

[totjup5]

Why...

[ionbasa]

Why...

4k movies.

 

Also, just if anyone is wondering 405nm is essentially violet light, near UV. So now the lasers in optical drives will also be violet.

[applebook]

I can't be alone in wanting permanent archival storage like this. Let's hope that Sony doesn't mess this up, and it will be reasonably priced.

[Korbo]

disks also get scratched up.... I dont think they are suitable for long term storage. and not to mention its not hard to break one either.

Depends on how you store the disks. If you put them in a proper container and take good care of them they can last for a long time. And it's R only so it's not like you'll be using it everyday. Also it's way cheaper to archive with optical disks than with an HDD.

[dizmo]

disks also get scratched up.... I dont think they are suitable for long term storage. and not to mention its not hard to break one either.

It's not hard to break a Swiss watch but they last for centuries if treated properly...

 

Depends on how you store the disks. If you put them in a proper container and take good care of them they can last for a long time. And it's R only so it's not like you'll be using it everyday. Also it's way cheaper to archive with optical disks than with an HDD.

Even if treated properly discs degrade over time. I've had several become unreadable after a period of 8 years.

 

 

I still prefer something like an MDisc. If it's as long lasting as those claim to be, it might be an interesting choice.

[algoat]

I'm very interested in this if the "archival" name is true. How long will these discs last? I wouldn't compare them to the cheap optical discs we have today if they use the archival standard. But even if they are $30/TBdisc, it would be way cheaper than HDDs. My many TBs of NAS drives will eventually fail no matter what raid configuration they are in.

[RainbowTylernol]

yesssssssssssss finally something to push 4K content more

I am stoked 

[AMICLG]

4k movies.

 

Also, just if anyone is wondering 405nm is essentially violet light, near UV. So now the lasers in optical drives will also be violet.

100% correct 405nm is almost UV.

[PortentousLad]

Let's hope the put them out before no more cases support optical drive bays :lol:

 

also why only up to 1tb that's not enough! oh damn I just had to think of the write speed...  

"write all your data on a disk in only 76 hours" <_<

[UnknownEngineer]

Let's hope the put them out before no more cases support optical drive bays :lol:

 

also why only up to 1tb that's not enough! oh damn I just had to think of the write speed...  

"write all your data on a disk in only 76 hours" <_<

How fast would these things be able to read, that is the main question. I can only see 4K movies when i think of 1TB discs.

For the first time you will have buffering when watching a movie off a local copy.

[ToxicFire]

Umm late to party much.. but as its not aimed at the everyday use market but rather the archiving market.... which frankly will go lets see optical disk versus tape... tape wins

[dragosudeki]

Lol... Sony isn't even doing well as company always downsizing and stuff... Should probably look into stopping this R&D nonsense...

[WhatTheQuack]

I don't really see the point of this. Why further develop a mostly dead technology? Aren't Blu-Rays high enough capacity to store 4K films anyway? 

[algoat]

I wonder if they are pairing it up with m-disc technology. A 1 TB disc that can last a thousand years would be very attractive for archivers.

[SirReallySam]

I have to admit I have a bit of a soft spot of optical media  =3 this kind of excites me

[mr moose]

Awesome news, now when you buy software from the shops they can put the 43MB installer on a 300GB disc instead of a 600MB cd and make you download the rest of the program using up your bandwidth and time.

[applebook]

Let's hope the put them out before no more cases support optical drive bays :lol:

 

also why only up to 1tb that's not enough! oh damn I just had to think of the write speed...  

"write all your data on a disk in only 76 hours" <_<

 

External drives.

 

Also, the write speed doesn't matter that much to me, so long as it's decent (and it will likely be) since I (and most people probably) would be using it only for occasional back ups of our most important data. 

[gatecrasherlok]

Really Panasonic and Sony, you guys are like a dog with a bone, let the cd's die please.

[PortentousLad]

External drives.

 

Also, the write speed doesn't matter that much to me, so long as it's decent (and it will likely be) since I (and most people probably) would be using it only for occasional back ups of our most important data. 

didn't it say non re-writeable?

 

Edit: hmm can't find anything on that.

[wpirobotbuilder]

Depends on how you store the disks. If you put them in a proper container and take good care of them they can last for a long time. And it's R only so it's not like you'll be using it everyday. Also it's way cheaper to archive with optical disks than with an HDD.

It's not practical. A Blu-Ray disk holds a maximum of 50GB per disc, and cost about $3 per disc (source). You can also get 25 GB discs for about $0.50 per disc (source)

 

You can get a 2TB external drive for about $100 (source).

 

To store 2TB, you'd have to buy 40 50GB Blu-Ray drives ($120), or 80 25GB discs ($40). You also have to buy a Blu-Ray R/W drive for about $70 (source). So it's not cheaper.

 

Also, the prospect of reading back 80 Blu-Ray discs to recover data is not a tantalizing proposition. Whereas with a hard drive you can just plug it in and leave it be. Also, 80 discs takes up a good deal of space.