Sony, Panasonic Developing 300GB+ Optical Disc Standard

[exfileme]

Sony and Panasonic want a 300 GB optical disc by 2015.

Sony, Panasonic Developing 300GB+ Optical Disc Standard : Read more

 

[ShadyHamster]

Can't even remember the last time i used an optical disc.

 

[codo]

panasonic is already irrelevant and sony hasn't done anything of note in a long time. this a big step in the wrong direction

 

[wavetrex]

I wouldn't mind a 300GB disk, but if it's cost per gigabyte is higher than for HDDs (which is the case for today's BluRay), then no thank you.

 

[DRosencraft]

As the article clearly states, this is mainly targeted towards archivists. 300 GB is an insane amount of space for a movie release, or a game, and is unseemly for an OS. Optical discs just make more sense for long-term storage (even if i do still prefer it for my games/OS/movies). This isn't so much a replacement for consumer Blu-Ray, as it is a replacement for niche and commercial Blu-Ray.

 

[Daniel Revas]

Why is this such a big deal when this is out there? http://www.extremetech.com/computing/159245-new-optical-laser-can-increase-dvd-storage-up-to-one-petabyte

300GB? So what?

 

[hardcore_gamer]

This amount of storage will be required when 4K movies go mainstream. Not everyone will have internet connection fast enough to stream 4K. Therefore optical discs will be needed again.

 

[ubercake]

Get with the program guys. We don't need your disks. Sony should have learned this with Blu-ray and lack of sales.

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.

 

[kujospam]

Ubercake, I did not look up the specs. The question isn't can in 5 years can the AVERAGE internet connection handle ONE 4k stream. It's if it can handle AT LEAST THREE. The average house hold that uses streaming as a video service streams from more than one location. Wife watching her show, Husband watching his show, and a kid or two watching their shows. Wither that be from the TV, Computer, Tablet ( yes I know that won't require 4k), etc. It isn't uncommon in my house old for the older kids to be watching something on netflix or hulu, and my wife and I watching something else. Or even different items.

 

[rwinches]

This in for near line hive storage. The NSA would be a good customer. A lot more cost effective than powered drives.
If the LB-DM9 has advanced compression tech it might store a max of 180 TB on 108 TB of Disk.

 

[evo_7]

Umm yeah uber, i think you're being short-sighted. I do prefer a USB/junk drive and cloud storage but sh*t I have to archive, this would be ideal given price point. To not have to dedicate a whole external/internal HD to projects and being able to more easily sort them versus relying on file-sorting and which HD would be another positive.

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.

 

[dimar]

BDXL should be enough for 4k blu-ray content using h265 codec. But I guess 300GB will allow us to have Lord of the Rings extended 4k editions on a single disk

 

[anything4this]

You guys speak as if you were the targeted audience..

 

[annymmo]

How about an upgrade where the disk doesn't need to spin around.
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.

 

[hannibal]

This is for commersial, but we really need some bigger storage for 4K and 8K content. And now even 1080p content via internet is pure crap, when considering quality... Pity but true. It may be good enough for handheld phone or tablet... but not for big sreen or even tv.
Here bigger is better... did I really say that...

 

[egowhip69]

This is being looked at as a replacement for things like LTO. I highly doubt there would be any initial application for home use. It might trickle down as 4k becomes more prevalent, but this is for business archive solutions.

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.

 

[zertam]

I'd like to see 80mm sized discs become more standard - would be neat to have a 3.5" optical disc drive.

 

[nevilence]

I think these companies have been at this long enough to know what kind of tech to develop. Bluray may have had bad sales but that does not deminish the benifit of the technology, bluray movies make dvds look like i animated them with ms paint. Sales is the short coming of the companies still demanding $30-50 (AUD) for a damn movie that cost probably a few cents to shit out of the factory.

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).

 

[giovanni86]

With Storage devices at 4TB's i for one would like something bigger then a 25/50GB disc.. I had a 1TB drive dying on me the cheaper solution was to burn about 20 BR discs since i was tight on money.. Would of been nice if all i needed was 3 of these instead of 20.. Just saying, if there was a 1TB optical disc I'm all for it!

 

[saymi]

Optical disks are cheapest archiving mediums. Tape drives too but optical disks have robust access times according to them. They might be also making another generation of money grabbing plan from consumer! Who knows?

 

[mrmez]

4K could be a boost for piracy.

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.

 

[tadej petric]

All I want to know is how much scratch resistant is it *looks at scratched Vice City CD*.

 

[somebodyspecial]

I get 100 bluray blanks for $58 from amazon (runtechmedia, OQBDR04LT-50 x 2pks). That's 2.2TB. You can't buy a drive for that and once burned unlike a drive these don't crash at some point. They have their uses vs. HD's. I could store 30x10MB 1080p bluray rips on these. Quite awesome IMHO. That would sure save me some case space.

 

[shin0bi272]

It sounds like these guys are trying to stay relevant in a san/spinning disk/streaming world.

When the cd was introduced it held more data than your hard drive. Now this newest technology only holds 300gb? Sure thats more than some SSD drives but you can get a 500gb external hard drive for 50bucks on pricewatch. That's more offline storage (as some here mentioned) for more than likely less money per disk than these would cost. Plus if 500gb isnt enough for you $154 will get you 4tb!

Not to mention (if youve ever used an optical disk jukebox) the pain in the ass it is to run into the server room and put in an offline disk every few minutes ALL DAMNED DAY. Then there's adding disks to add new info to and make backups of that new info every day too. There's the cost of the jukebox itself and maintenance on the robotic arm and the 10+ optical drives in it.

Compare that to a san where you have 192 1tb hard drives in 1 cabinet and if one of the drives dies you get an email notification and a light on the drive itself to tell you to go pull it.

Then there's streaming like most people here said... sure your internet connection might not be able to stream 4k movies but who's making 4k movies now to need to be streamed? When they become mainstream the internet services will be forced to up their speeds en mass to keep from losing customers. Granted Time warner will be the last ones to do so but it will happen. Thats the free market at work. The customers demand stuff and someone will supply them eventually.

 

[hannibal]

Then there's streaming like most people here said... sure your internet connection might not be able to stream 4k movies but who's making 4k movies now to need to be streamed? When they become mainstream the internet services will be forced to up their speeds en mass to keep from losing customers. Granted Time warner will be the last ones to do so but it will happen. Thats the free market at work. The customers demand stuff and someone will supply them eventually.

I supose that 4K streaming will be even worse quality that 1080p streaming is today! You can not compare real blue ray and internet 1080p content in the same day... Ofcourse if the quality would be good, why not but it is hard to see any "legal" high quality streaming servise in any foreseen future, even in 1080p not to mention 4K or higher resolution...