Don’t Count Physical Media Out Just Yet: Sony and Panasonic Announce Plans for 300GB Disc
Somewhere Gretchen Weiners is sitting alone with her DVDs, calling them all "fetch."
Between things like online streaming and cloud storage, physical storage is rapidly becoming less and less relevant to the general consumer — that is, unless Sony and Panasonic have anything to say about it. The two tech companies are in development to create a new optical disc standard that will be capable of storing over 300GB of data. You’re welcome, hoarders of data.
While Sony and Panasonic have plans to sell this highly efficient disc to the average buyer, they first expect to woo data users in professional industries that store and transfer large files — particularly those that deal with video production and distribution, such as broadcasting companies and filmmakers. In the press release, Sony Corp. explicitly states that it’s this void they’re hoping to fill: “there has been an increasing need for archive capabilities, not only from video production industries, […] but also from cloud data centers that handle increasingly large volumes of data following the evolution in network services. ”
Of course, neither of the companies are new to the data storage business. In 2012, Sony released a storage cartridge that could back up any amount of data from 300GB to 1.5TB using several 25GB discs; Panasonic similarly created a series of storage devices that housed up to twelve 100GB optical discs. Both are hoping to combine their efforts in order to meet the demands of a rapidly expanding market.
The 300GB disc is expected to be in development until 2015, however, so don’t go setting fire to all your old hard drives in anticipation just yet. In fact, probably don’t do that at all.
(via The Verge, image via 俊貿 張)
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