"Archival Disc" - The next generation of optical discs from Sony and Panasonic

[xelement5x]

Sounds like physical media's swan song will not be the blu-ray, there is a new optical media disc in the works!


http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/201403/14-0310E/

From the article:

Tokyo, Japan - March 10, 2014 - Sony Corporation ("Sony") and Panasonic Corporation ("Panasonic") 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.

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.

[Necromancer]

Recordable media won't go away any time soon...... for business data backup use.  Consumer level use for movies/games/etc. are a different story.

[synbiosfan]

Recordable media won't go away any time soon...... for business data backup use.  Consumer level use for movies/games/etc. are a different story.

Consumer use may lessen but people will always want a hard copy of their pics, home movies, etc. Eventually one of these sites like FaceBook, Photobucket, whatever you can think of, will have an accident, natural disaster, hackers, new laws, etc. erase so many memories.

[Punch]

It's so sad that they are considering their new media an "Archival" disc. RIP physical media.

[DragonmasterDan]

Well considering Sony's excellent track record of starting physical media storage formats with Betamax, Minidisc and UMD movies taking the world by storm I think we're in for an exciting future....

[vestcoat]

Does this mean I have to replace my zip discs? Will archival drives be scsi or serial?

[geise]

Answer: IDE

[TheClash603]

Well considering Sony's excellent track record of starting physical media storage formats with Betamax, Minidisc and UMD movies taking the world by storm I think we're in for an exciting future....

In fairness, Sony did a really do a good job of pushing DVD and Blu-ray, which they co-developed.

Obviously the PS2 and PS3 were the dominant forces in this push and "Archival Disc" won't be featured in a game console that will be adopted by millions.

[Punch]

The CD-ROM Audio Compact Disc too don't forget it.

[xelement5x]

The CD-ROM too don't forget it.

Yeah, wasn't Panasonic the company that developed the CD-ROM in the first place?

[ClodBuster]

it was Philips and Sony for Audio CD, I've got no idea if the same applies to CD-ROM. Panasonic was one of the few companies supporting DVD-RAM (no typo).

[xelement5x]

it was Philips and Sony for Audio CD, I've got no idea if the same applies to CD-ROM. Panasonic was one of the few companies supporting DVD-RAM (no typo).

Ahh, good catch.  I always mix those two companies up for some reason.  Just like World Market and Whole Foods.