Blu-ray, your days might be over soon.
In a recent announcement by Sony and Panasonic, the two Japanese tech giants are slated to develop a 300GB capacity optical disc in an effort to provide a successor to the Blu-ray format by as early as 2015. In the process, they are looking at increasing the current maximum capacity of optical discs by as much as 200%. Today’s Blu-ray discs sport 128Gb of memory storage.
In the past, the two companies have been working together to promote high density removable media storage. Sony has independently developed a cartridge storage system that could hold up to 1.5TB per unit. On the other hand, Panasonic has pioneered the RAID storage system, which could be configured to hold up to 180TB.
Of course, the two firms have collectively worked together in the past to advance the Blu-ray platform amidst its competition with the HD-DVD as the market standard that would replace the DVD platform. Since then, Blu-ray has been one of the gaming industry’s medium providers, powering many game titles for the PS3 console.
In announcing the deal, a spokesperson from Sony said, “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. Both Sony and Panasonic have a proven track record in developing Blu-ray disc format technologies, and by actively promoting the adoption of a new standard for next-generation high-capacity optical discs, we intend to offer solutions that preserve valuable data for future generations.”
As for the commercial availability of such new technology, no estimates have been provided. Nevertheless, it is very much interesting to note how these initiative would unfold in the coming days, since quite recently, optical discs have been taking quite a hit in popularity and usability, thanks mostly in part to the move towards mobile devices and cloud computing.
Source: V3