Sony Developing 300GB Blu-Ray Successor

StewShearerOld

Geekdad News Writer
Jan 5, 2013
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Sony Developing 300GB Blu-Ray Successor



Sony has signed an agreement with Panasonic to develop high capacity optical discs for 2015.

One of the saving graces of the PlayStation 3, especially during its early days, was the Blu-Ray format. The PS3 was, at its release, one of the cheapest and best Blu-Ray players on the market. The Blu-Ray in turn, especially after it <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/81577-PS3-to-See-Sales-Boost-from-Blu-Ray-Victory-Analysts>defeated the competing HD-DVD format, has remained a draw for the PS3 in the years to follow thanks to its high storage capacity and prevalent presence in HD entertainment. Now, Sony has revealed that the future could see the introduction of a new wave of optical discs with a storage capacity well beyond current standards.

According to a press release put out by Sony, the company, which created the Blu-Ray format, has signed an agreement with Panasonic with the intent of "developing a next-generation standard for professional-use optical discs." These new discs will be developed with a recording capacity of around 300GB, three times that of the Blu-Ray's<a href=http://www.pcworld.com/article/202185/article.html>100GB upper limit. The discs will fulfill "[the] 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." If all goes to plan this new high capacity format will become available in 2015.

While the press release doesn't explicitly discuss videogames, it's not much of stretch to surmise that more storage capacity could mean bigger games. Likewise, a high capacity disc would probably be helpful in furthering the proliferation of employ a Blu-Ray disc drive.

Source: Sony


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Sep 14, 2009
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StewShearer said:
These new discs will be developed with a recording capacity of around 300GB, three times that of the Blu-Ray's


sweet jesus, most SSD's don't even hold that much, fuckin christ.

still, technology making more jumps is all the better.
 

TiberiusEsuriens

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Jun 24, 2010
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StewShearer said:
This being said, if the new discs aren't compatible with current Blu-Ray drives (a significant possibility), it could limit their usefulness on hardware like the PS4 which will employ a Blu-Ray disc drive.
My thoughts exactly. While it's a neat idea, Blu-Ray itself has barely been adopted yet - most people still stick to DVDs. Also, 3x the storage is not nearly a big enough leap for people to really care about. Floppies, disc, DVD, blu-ray; these have all had a leap of several magnitudes (~100x boost). The next major format will only change when people start sharing terabytes if we follow <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law>Moore's Law, otherwise this will go the way of laserdisc, betamax, and HD-DVD.

On the otherhand, if they can manage to get Blu-Ray players to read them as well, they'll simply become BluRay+, just like Sony did with the original compression updates. Originally ~14GB, they somehow got the same discs to hold ~33GB, then ~100GB.
 

Roxas1359

Burn, Burn it All!
Aug 8, 2009
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*wets pants*
I think I just wet myself. See this is what I love about technology, you think it's at its peak, but then it just shoots up again. Really it's thanks to Sony and Panasonic that we have these huge leaps, although I'd wait to release the stuff for it and have Bluray catch on a bit more.

This again raises my question I have about the Wii U though, why in the hell did they design it with only a 25GB limit with the drive when they worked with Panasonic? Makes no sense really.
 

Covarr

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May 29, 2009
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I'm glad the Xbox One and Wii U both have higher capacity discs. The PS3's greatest weakness was that cross-platform games were often gimped on PS3 because the 360 drive only read DVDs. And cruddy online. But mostly the disc thing.

P.S. Thanks
 

Ishigami

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Sep 1, 2011
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So did they finalize a definite 4K standard?
Because without compression 300GB won?t last very long with 4k?

Considering that the cheapest 4K TVs are currently around 5000$ I would not worry too much about a new player...

Covarr said:
he PS3's greatest weakness was that cross-platform games were often gimped on PS3 because the 360 drive only read DVDs. And cruddy online. But mostly the disc thing.
BS propaganda at its best.
 

Dindril

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Jan 16, 2009
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Well, as they said, this is for professional use. I don't expect this to be used commercially for a long while. At least not until the next console generation. These are likely only going to be used on the business side of things for a long while.
 

gigastar

Insert one-liner here.
Sep 13, 2010
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Adam Jensen said:
What the fuck? This isn't good news. We were supposed to be moving away from disc technology!
Its the same thing with HDD and SSD.

The former is still around purely because its way ahead in sheer capacity.
 

IanDavis

Blue Blaze Irregular 1st Class
Aug 18, 2012
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I can't see this lasting very long. At this point, if you need offline access to stuff, it's easier to just download it ahead of time. Reminds me of the guys working on perfecting the turntable. They started using vibration isolation and laser styluses, only to have the CD come out and render all their work moot.
 

dragongit

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Feb 22, 2011
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bringer of illumination said:
What in the bloody hell takes up 300 gigs that you would want to put on an optical disc?
4K movies? They need something for those new TVs. along with a new format in which to play them on. If anything it'll be expensive like the Blu-ray was at launch, if not more so.
 
Apr 28, 2008
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Adam Jensen said:
What the fuck? This isn't good news. We were supposed to be moving away from disc technology!
That would mean downloading 300gb.

Good christ even saying that puts a chill down my spine. And a chill down my ~70kb/s connection.
 

Nikolaz72

This place still alive?
Apr 23, 2009
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Irridium said:
Adam Jensen said:
What the fuck? This isn't good news. We were supposed to be moving away from disc technology!
That would mean downloading 300gb.

Good christ even saying that puts a chill down my spine. And a chill down my ~70kb/s connection.
And thus publishers defeated the pirates by making the movies files too big to download for anything but shitty cinema-cam.
 

emeraldrafael

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Jul 17, 2010
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maybe its just me but i cant even begin to imagine the game that needs for its initial playthrough anyhtingnear 300GB. I mean, I get its not really for videogame use and its moer for the higher up stuff that the average person isnt doing. But there is a point here you have to ask how much is too much.
 

Phrozenflame500

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Dec 26, 2012
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Not sure why there would be even a demand for this aside from super-high quality movies. But I suppose all technological advances are good.