Sony, Panasonic Developing 300GB+ Optical Disc Standard
Sony and Panasonic want a 300 GB optical disc by 2015.
On Monday Sony announced that it has agreed to work with Panasonic in developing a next-generation standard for an optical disc with at least 300 GB of storage by 2015.
The agreement arrives after both companies, who previously developed products based on the Blu-ray format, realized that optical discs will need larger capacities in years to come, especially as growth in the archive market continues to accelerate. Yet, why continue to use optical discs? Hard drives and solid-state drives have plenty of storage capacity, right? They're not long-term solutions.
"Optical disks have excellent properties to protect them against the environment, such as dust-resistance and water-resistance, and can also withstand changes in temperature and humidity when stored," the companies said in a statement. "They also allow inter-generational compatibility between different formats, ensuring that data can continue to be read even as formats evolve. This makes them a robust medium for long-term storage of content."
This standard will be based on technologies each developed separately, Sony said. Just last year, Sony commercialized a file-based archive system in its XDCAM series of professional broadcasting products which housed twelve 25 GB optical discs within a single, compact cartridge. In July, Panasonic launched the LB-DM9 series of optical disc storage devices which uses a magazine of twelve 100 GB optical discs. A maximum of 90 magazines can be stored in the LB-DM9, totaling 108 TB (the announcement claims 180 TB).
"In recent years, there has been an increasing need for archive capabilities, not only from video production industries, such as motion pictures and broadcasting, but also from cloud data centers that handle increasingly large volumes of data following the evolution in network services," Sony said. "By actively promoting the adoption of a new standard for next-generation high-capacity optical discs, they intend to offer solutions that preserve valuable data for future generations."
Sony and Panasonic will continue to hold discussions regarding the specifications and other items relating to the development of this new standard, the company said.
300GB? So what?
Streaming is the way to go. If we want to store larger files, we can use internal or external HDDs/SSDs.
Internet speeds keep improving. By the time 4K is the standard HDTV format (5 years+?), our internet connections will be able to easily carry the 4K signal.
If the LB-DM9 has advanced compression tech it might store a max of 180 TB on 108 TB of Disk.
That said, not everything in technology has to be based on how useful it is to "you" let alone no one can map out the net benefits to other technologies this may aid in developing.
With small mirrors it should be possible to cheaply accomplish that.
That's what I want to see in DVD development, make it work better.
Here bigger is better... did I really say that...
I for one would love it. you could have ~10 disks for the same space used by an LTO tape... that would be 3Tb in the same space. Plus, I'm sure you can get much better read and write speeds than the 160Mbps currently enjoyed by LTO. And if they actually get 300Gb on first gen, then LTO would be a thing of the past.
Plus, the disk format could be allow your archive machine to be setup into a carousel configuration (500 disks per tier, and the system starting with 5 tiers and expanding out to ???), making high density archive an actual possibility.
And yes there is some pretty amazing tech out there with insane capacity but it seems obvious to me that these companies do not develop that kind of tech for whatever reason. be it viability, marketability, cost and whatever else.
I think its interesting to see what these companies do when it comes to storage, there are some very real world reasons why optical still exists (as the article addresses).
Any encryption etc will likely be cracked very quickly, as it has been in the past.
Disc burners will be out soon enough, and disc cost will fall rapidly.
No more ISP's tracking your online file sharing. Back to old school copying.