Sony Corporation (‘Sony’) and Panasonic Corporation (‘Panasonic’) today announced that they have signed a basic agreement with the objective of jointly developing a next-generation standard for professional-use optical discs, with the objective of expanding their archive business for long-term digital data storage.
This is good news for early adopters of 4K televisions as well as the medical imaging community and data centers alike. As data continues to grow the demand for a cheap long term storage alternative to magnetic storage is still robust.
With metered data from major ISPs and the cost of data pipes increasing day by day (looked at your cable/internet bill lately?) this is welcome news.
One must ponder if this sets up Sony/Panasonics solution for a HDD vs Bluray type battle with the optical disk currently being developed at General Electric? Clearly GE has a captivated audience in their healthcare imaging sector with the gigantic files associated with modern day MRI/PET and CT scans.
Still the question remains- is the market big enough for two major players/formats?
Time will tell, for more updates about the current state of optical media and long term archival options such as CD/DVD, UDO and Magnetic Media please stop back often.