Sony and Panasonic plan 300GB Blu-Ray replacement for 2015

Sony and Panasonic have announced a partnership to develop a new format of optical storage disc for data archiving to replace Blu-Ray, and plan to get a 300GB disc in the market by the end of 2015. In a canned statement the two companies said they had "a proven track record in developing Blu-ray Disc format technologies, and …

[Arthur 1]

Seems Irrelevant

Optical media is increasingly niche. More and more content is delivered digitally and then moved around by flash. Also more and more content is being consumed on tablets and other devices which can't practically be built to read optical media.

What's the market now? I get that sneakernet can be faster than internet and that some people have restrictive bandwidth caps, but it seems like this would be increasingly moving towards just being an archive format. The discs are probably cheap and long lived, but I don't see them as being used for even a fraction as many applications as DVD.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Seems Irrelevant

Let me know how downloading a 300GB movie works for you. How about streaming? Even if you had a 100Mbps Internet connection and could sustain 100% utilization for that single transfer, it would take nearly 3 1/2 hours to download that 52 minute movie. To make it manageable, the content will need to be highly compressed and the advantage of 4k starts to diminish. Sure you have more pixels, but a low bitrate will make it look ugly; pixelation, artifacts, etc.

[Lusty]

Re: Seems Irrelevant

But very few people want 4k video. Many people still buy DVD because it's £5 cheaper than Bluray so I'd say that although Bluray won the battle it has yet to win the war and become what I'd consider a successful format. It only sells as well as it does thanks to all the Playstations out there, I think most people even non techie can see a shift to downloads like with their music.

Remember the "next big thing" in audio was to be the super audio CD with better sound quality. What actually happenned was that on a global scale the majority decided to go for MP3, a quality lower than CD but with many advantages such as download.

I use Ultraviolet to watch movies and the quality is fine for most of my viewing on various devices including the lounge telly. I think as a geek who spends a lot of time reading geek sites you've made the classic mistake of thinking everyone else also want cinema quality at home because that's all you read. The "normals" just wanted a bigger but thinner screen and barely noticed the transition to high def.

[MJI]

Re: Seems Irrelevant

I hate MP3s but I own a few SACDs and DVD-A

This annoyed me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Seems Irrelevant

I want 4K video and I ditest MP3.

Next.

[MJI]

Re: Seems Irrelevant (PhilW)

Now can one of the downvoters tell us why you downvoted him?

Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

I get the feeling they have not heard a HD music format in action

[Bod]

Re: Seems Irrelevant

and MP3s... yes, the vast (and I mean vast) majority don't really give a crap about the quality, they just want the music. Passing some kids the other day walking through the local park and they were happy listening to whatever autotuned crap it was on their mobile phone speaker. Mono speaker, truly awful quality. Oh whilst on a call to someone and letting the person at the other end listen to the music fed back from the speaker to microphone and over the network. Even worse. They all enjoyed it.

Same with the millions of iSheep and clones with terribly fitting ear buds that clearly are poor quality because it's leaking so much sound, but they don't care.

Sad for those of us who do, but we are the minority.

[Robert E A Harvey]

Re: I use Ultraviolet to watch movies

Coo. I'd heard that a few of us were Tetrachromic, but I had no idea we were evolving out-of-band receptors too!

Oh, OK -->

You can probably see through my invisibility cloak anyway, with vision like that!

[Steve I]

Re: Seems Irrelevant

"But very few people want 4k video. Many people still buy DVD because it's £5 cheaper than Bluray"

But very few people want HD video. Many people still buy VHS because it's £5 cheaper than DVD.

There's a pattern here...

[jaduncan]

Re: Seems Irrelevant

I believe Google Fiber is a gigabit. Other ISPs will also be that fast before 4K gets big.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Seems Irrelevant

Gigabit isn't gigabit though; you still have a lot of shared resources along the way up to and including where the content is coming from. Google is not using 100Gbps links to the local distributions points to feed Google fiber customers. You are also talking about a service that is available in one city, another that is being converted and then a third that is planned. Back to 100Gbps, Gen 1, the optic alone is $100,000. Even the Gen 2 is/will be pricey.

[Bod]

Re: Seems Irrelevant

"Let me know how downloading a 300GB movie works for you"

Let me know when the average consumer not only wants but could even see a blind bit of difference in a 4K set up anyway, let alone afford it.

Non starter for the consumer.

Hell, most of my friends and family still use DVD and having seen HD stuff, their reaction is yeah it's nice, but they're happy with their little 26" telly in the corner of the room and would not be able to tell the difference. And I agree. My folks have a smaller telly, only 720p and they play DVDs on it and standard def Sky. It looks great on that size telly. HD is a high cost for them and really only marginal benefit, and they're only really interested in watching the show or film, not how good it looks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Seems Irrelevant

Or keeps disc rental relevant for awhile.

Nice for data archiving, but not from Sony, please.

[Eddy Ito]

Re: Seems Irrelevant

"To make it manageable, the content will need to be highly compressed and the advantage of 4k starts to diminish."

I'd say the advantage of 4k starts to diminish at about 3 to 4 feet on the 56" OLED screen mentioned in the article.

Consider that a 56" 16:9 screen would be a tick under 49" wide and that 4,000 pixels across that width would provide 50 pixels per degree (ppd) at a distance of about 29 inches. Knock it back to 35 inches and that jumps to about 57.4 ppd and going all the way back to 51 inches pushes it over 78 ppd. At a typical viewing distance, for the sake of defining a convention let's call it twice the diagonal measure of the screen, 112 inches this becomes 162.7 ppd. Now then, unless you have exceptional visual acuity or like to sit rather close to the set all those extra pixels aren't really getting you a better picture because the resolution of the eye starts to peter out in the 50 to 60 ppd range.

To put this into perspective at 10 inches distance, the iPhone 5 and 4 gives 57.4 ppd and 55.4 ppd respectively. Likewise the Galaxy 4S with an impressive 1920 pixels across its 5" screen gives 78.1 ppd at the same 10 inches which is double the diagonal measure of the screen. So how far away would these phones have to be to give the same 162.7 ppd of the 4k TV? 21.1 inches for the S4 and 28.6 for the iPhone 5. I don't know too many people who complain about the crappy pixelated display on these phones and most people won't see the difference.

One last kicker, the above defined convention of a viewing distance that is twice the screen diagonal is fairly arbitrary but what it does is make the visual area constant among devices. In the first paragraph with the 56" TV at a 35 inch viewing distance would be like holding an iPhone 5 a mere 2.5 inches from your pupil and yet the picture would be just as clear as the phone would be at 10 inches. Perhaps I'm just a half blind clueless git but I don't much see the point of 4k TV on anything but an absolutely giant set that is to be watched from a considerable distance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Seems Irrelevant

I believe that is what the article said.

[Christian Berger]

The way it could become relevant...

...would be to have decently priced extensible changers. You know the 100 disk CD changers that used to be available in the 1990s. You'd need that under computer control with a lot more slots. If you keep adding bigger and bigger changers you'll eventually break even with harddisks.

[Voland's right hand]

Re: The way it could become relevant...

First step for it to become relevant is to work reliably using bog standard devices and media you can go and buy in a computer shop (or off Amazon nowdays). I tried to use BR as backup media and gave up after a week of fighting with it. Average time to write one disk - 6-9 hours, failure rate 20%+. No thanks. It ended up cheaper to set-up a remote backup facility and backup remotely to an old NAS there.

The market for new optical media is dead. The only reason DVD is still out there is because of the massive legacy install base accompanied by a distribution channel.

[Daniel B.]

But...

What happened with the BD 16 theoretical layers? No-one's bothering to do that anymore?

[kevin king]

Re: But...

BluRay and Sony XDCAM disk is similar and the XDCAM's hold either 23 GB of data (PFD23, single-layer, rewritable), 50 GB (PFD50, dual-layer, rewritable), 100GB (triple-layer, rewritable) or 128 GB (PFD128QLW, quad-layer, write-once). So no doubt this disk will be close to the variant you are talking about, but it will be used Professionally not on the consumer side as the article talks about Pro.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony... Oh well.

Unfortunately with Sony's involvement you know that the format...

- will be priced absurdly high.

- will be smothered with poorly implemented DRM.

- will arrive at least 2 years late.

- will, 'for your protection and enjoyment', require the installation if a root kit (a 'rights management driver') if you want to play the disc on a PC.

- will have absurd amounts of non-skipable adverts, dire warnings about piracy killing kittens etc...

No thanks.

[Roger B]

Re: Sony... Oh well.

...and they'll rush the product to market before its finished, constantly updating the standard over the next 6 or 7 years, meaning either cheaper players wont work and others will constantly be requiring updates and then we can start all over again with Super HDMi cables and the debate on how much we should spend!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sony... Oh well.

- will be priced absurdly high.

Wiindows 8

- will be smothered with poorly implemented DRM.

Windows 8

- will arrive at least 2 years late.

Windows Vista (okay 7, but lets faceit, it's a vista service pack that they sold)

- will, 'for your protection and enjoyment', require the installation if a root kit (a 'rights management driver') if you want to play the disc on a PC.

Windows 8

- will have absurd amounts of non-skipable adverts, dire warnings about piracy killing kittens etc...

Trying to read the licence on windows 8

-and they'll rush the product to market before its finished

Windows 8 / xbox 360

Sorry, I just felt with the stupid sony bashing based on BS, there should be some microsoft bashing to even it out, what with the upcoming console war, and lack of Eadon.

[TeeCee]

Re: Sony... Oh well.

...and lack of Eadon.

You mean you're not Eadon? Who knew?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sony... Oh well.

Mod! Mod! Eadon is back!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sony... Oh well.

I can't be Eadon. I failed to put MS FAIL! at the end of my post.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sony... Oh well.

All true about MS, but no need for it.

The so-called Sony bashing was simply someone pointing out the bleeding obvious in regard to how the company behaves.

Sony have a serious image problem. Unfortunately justified. Living on former glories (yeah, MS blah blah).

[Darren Barratt]

Re: Sony... Oh well.

"- will be priced absurdly high.

Wiindows 8" (sic)

Sorry, but I think you'll find that the upgrade from 7 to 8 was the cheapest ever.

It's still rubbish though.

[Bub]

Re: Sony... Oh well.

Sony.... root kit... DRM.... evil evil evil..................yawn

[MJI]

Re: Sony... Oh well.

Sony formats

At least have always aimed to be better than the opposition.

But think CD was a huge success.

Beta was better.

Never heard Elcassete or whatever it is called but supposed to be good.

ATRAC was a good audio compression algorithm

BluRay is more future proof than HD-DVD

Sony have developed a lot of good formats.

[Davidcro]

Re: Sony... Oh well.

The original CD format was defined, invented and demonstrated (in 1979) by Philips. Sony dropped its format and joined with Philips to define the final CD-DA format to which Sony contributed the CIRC error correction, Philips the manufacturing process, EFM and defect resilience.

[Bod]

Re: Sony... Oh well.

"Sony have developed a lot of good formats."

MiniDisc... oh wait.

SACD... oh wait.

Proprietary Memory Stick, that's a great idea too ;)

[Piro]

Re: Sony... Oh well.

Eh, Bluray wasn't all that good compared to HD-DVD. It's a little larger per layer, but early Blurays still used MPEG2, HD-DVD did not.

Also, HD-DVD's spec required two decoders for PiP video, Bluray did not, so older players are hardware left out of features of later Bluray discs.

Essentially, Bluray's spec was half baked from the start, and anything but future proof.

You've handily missed out the multitude of pointless memory cards.

Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick Duo Pro, whatever the new card is in the vita, etc...

[MJI]

Re: Sony... Oh well.

BD can handle all the same codecs as HDDVD, just that it can hold more data, which with a longer film is very important.

Being able to support MPEG2 1440x1080/50i to me is very important.

Home burnt from HDV

[Tapeador]

Re: Sony... Oh well.

Unfortunately with Sony's involvement you know that the format...

- will be priced absurdly high.

Who's pointing a gun to your head to buy it? Tell you what - when you're ready and overjoyed at working for $3 a day, then you can argue always-low prices for discretionary purchases have some positive moral content

- will be smothered with poorly implemented DRM.

Right, because who needs property rights? By the way, I'm confiscating your house. Freedom of the bricks-and-mortar superhighway, see? Enjoy.

- will arrive at least 2 years late.

Hey I thought you didn't want it anyway?

- will, 'for your protection and enjoyment', require the installation if a root kit (a 'rights management driver') if you want to play the disc on a PC.

See above.

- will have absurd amounts of non-skipable adverts, dire warnings about piracy killing kittens etc...

Because piracy only kills kittens, it has nothing to do with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of jobs and careers in the arts, industries even, being destroyed.

No thanks.

Who cares what a cretin like you thinks anyway?

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

@Tapeador

Tapeador, you're a troll.

How do I know? Because nobody can be that stupid for real...

[frank ly]

" ... 300GB-worth of CGI wizardry ..."

I'd prefer about 4GB (or less) of interesting story, believable plot development and good acting. There are other things/skills they could try to deliver but they need to get the basics right first.

[wowfood]

Re: " ... 300GB-worth of CGI wizardry ..."

"Who needs story when you have explosions KABOOM!"

- Michael Bay

I'd actually be happy with what you just said in videogames. Tired of new games coming out ,pushing the limits of graphics etc to fill up the entire disk and give us some gun wank, only to find out that the game is a carbon copy clone of CoD with a few extra polygons per model and a new handgun you'll never use. Not to mention when you buy a game for £50 and then find out it's only takes about 5hours to complete, and 2 of those 5 hours are cutscenes and arduously slow loading screens whenever you go into the pause menu (I'm looking at you Fable 3)

[MJI]

Re: " ... 300GB-worth of CGI wizardry ..."

Disc full of games.

Lets look at my latest purchase

Limits of graphics pushed - yes for console

Story - definately - very emotional

Lots of guns - no

Short SP - 8 hours in and no where near end

Hard - very

But produced by a Sony owned studio.

[wowfood]

Re: " ... 300GB-worth of CGI wizardry ..."

okay my example wasn't that great, it does vary a lot by studio. There are some that do launch amazingly intricate game worlds with hours upon hours of gameplay and additional gameplay. But there are just as many people launching games with terrible stories and 3h of gameplay if you're any good. (would be a bit mroe if you didn't spawn right next to where you died)

[MJI]

Re: " ... 300GB-worth of CGI wizardry ..."

Would be good for Fallout type games!

[MJI]

Re: " ... 300GB-worth of CGI wizardry ..." (Wowfood)

There are a lot of really good games and space used doesn't really come into it.

Short but very good, Journey

Long, hard and very well executed, The Last of Us

Lots of shorter games are more about the multiplayer than the single player

This generation we have been careful to buy decent games rather than cheap games.

[Richard Ball]

Re: " ... 300GB-worth of CGI wizardry ..."

We'll all be lucky if there's 4k of good acting etc to be found in among whatever gets released in this format.

[kevin king]

This isn't about BluRay but the net Generation of XDCAM disk used in Professional TV Production http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XDCAM

[Neoc]

Enough...

"...a new format of optical storage disc ..."

Here's a question: I know USB sticks and comparatively more expensive to produce that spinning plastic. But that's mostly due to the fact they have to be re-writeable. How cheaply can WORM memory be made so that you can burn a movie (or three) onto a small chip?

[TeeCee]

Re: Enough...

It's probably not how cheaply the WORM memory could be made, but how fast it could be written to.

You'd have to come up with something rather funky to beat the few seconds of time it takes to press a read-only CD, DVD or BD in mass production.

The plant, labourforce etc is a fixed cost. If a disc pops out of the machine every 5 seconds, then the cost is materials + 5 seconds of overhead. If your machine writes a 300Gb stick every 10 minutes.......(!)

[John 172]

Re: Enough...

True, but did you ever see a VHS duplication plant...

[tmcd35]

First news story for the Playstation 5?

and the PS4 hasn't even been released yet.

If Sony are true to form the PS5 will have a 300Gb optical drive just to make sure it get's into living rooms and rival systems don't take hold.

It worked for both DVD (PS2) and Blu-Ray (PS3) despite HD-DVD being the better tech...

[wowfood]

Re: First news story for the Playstation 5?

This may be a question of ignorance on my part, but how was HD-DVD the better format?

It had a smaller storage capacity (15gb vs 25gb) it had a slower transfer rate (36mb vs 53mb or with video etc 30 vs 48)

So at launch HD-DVD was slower, had less capacity, and from the stats it supported pretty much the exact same codecs and audo as the BD (Except HD-DVD had better support for dolby)

Was it cheaper or something?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: First news story for the Playstation 5?

I believe the total lack of region coding (on disc or on player software) may have had something to do with it. Also something about because it was an "extension" of a DVD (file systems etc) but with more on a disc, the existing software could be made to handle HD-DVD much more easily. In a similar vein a dual-layer HD-DVD/regular DVD was possible and slightly more elegant than having to flip from BD side to DVD side. But I could be wrong, this was quite a while ago.

[MJI]

Re: First news story for the Playstation 5?

I think the DVD part of HD-DVD was a trick by Toshiba to get it accepted by more people.

[Bod]

Re: First news story for the Playstation 5?

"HD-DVD was slower, had less capacity"

Transfer speed made crap all difference for video use. It plays movies at the correct speed. Job done.

My HD DVDs also all load *way* faster than it takes my Blu Ray player to chug away loading a pile of Java code for the menus. Just let me skip the thing and play the movie. Can't I just uninstall Java from it? ;)

Capacity was a non issue. Never had an HD DVD movie that was split over two discs. Extras might be on another where they could cram them on one Blu Ray, but so what. I'm bored with extras these days anyway (though I'm bored with movies too. Barely buy any on optical formats now).

Someone mentioned not as tough. The other way round. Blu Ray was vulnerable because the data layer was closer to the surface. They had to implement a fix putting a protective hard coating layer on it. HD DVD was just the same as any DVD and while no protective layer, it was more tolerant due to bigger laser wavelength / bigger pits on the surface (hence the smaller capacity). In fact my one only 'HD' format disc that is non playable is on Blu Ray. There's a very tiny scratch there almost impossible to see. I've got big scratches on HD DVDs like on old DVDs and they play fine.

[MJI]

Re: First news story for the Playstation 5?

We look after our discs.

But you have admitted the big failing of Toshibas format, lack of capacity.

As to loading, never seen one take more than a few seconds.

Best thing about HD-DVD is that they were easier to rip so they could be torrented and then watched on the most popular Blu Ray player.

That is how we got around lack of Blu Ray releases from certain studios.

[MJI]

Re: First news story for the Playstation 5?

HD-DVD was smaller capacity and not as tough

[anoncow]

leave Java out this time

What a braindamaged idea that was. Every single time I play a Blu-ray disk I ask myself why I let myself in for this abuse. Obviously Java lag is just one part of it, but it's a major part. Come to think of it, I guess I will just sit the next generation Blu-ray out, forever.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Re: Oh look

> A solution looking for a problem.

It does seem like it. At least the 4k part, anyway. Some Reg links:

"4K video may wow vidiots, but content creators see pitfalls"

"The future of cinema and TV: It’s game over for the hi-res hype"

The gist: higher res is not a panacea.

[Horridbloke]

Numbers please...

Can anyone work out the traditional "Micro Live" metric : how many phone books could be stored on one of these disks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Numbers please...

What's a phone book?

[wowfood]

Re: Numbers please...

it's like google but for phone numbers, and you have to flick through the pages manually. More hassle than it's worth tbh.

[Horridbloke]

Re: What's a phone book?

It's something Geoff Capes used to tear in two back in the eighties. Their IT uses are (1) an obscure measure of data quantity (2) adhoc monitor stands.

[KierO]

Any interested? ANYONE?

DVD was the last great, widely adopted media format. Not many people have been bothered by blu-ray, what makes Sony and Panasonic think anyone will care about it's replacement?

Streaming, Live TV control and Recording (Sky+, Tivo etc) have all but made physical media a bit moot.

[MJI]

Re: Any interested? ANYONE?

There are always people who want the latest format, film fans will be quite likely to want to go 4K.

Everyone assumes that what they want everyone wants, someone who pays a few thousand for a prohector will no baulk at buying a 4K optical disc player.

Some people like expensive cars, some like expensive furniture, some like top end AV kit.

Yes my TV is worth more than my car!

[Confuciousmobil]

I remember

When people were wondering why CDs were made. They were expensive and who would need all that space?

Most computer content is downloaded or streamed these days, I only have a 120 Meg connection, I'm sure it will be faster in a few years 13 years ago I was paying £70/month for a 64k connection) . I have a 46" 3D TV and Blu Ray player which was unheard of a few years ago. If 4K TV takes off then people will need something to buy 4K films on, I would imagine download speeds for most still would not have caught up.

I am surprised at people here saying things like "no one will use it", people will find a use. Things move on, and while computers seem to be moving to an online world, films are just one area this might be useful - the other obvious one is, of course, backup. Now why didn't Sony/Panasonic think of that? Oh, wait, they did.

Have fun all.

[adam payne]

300GB wow that's a disk.

Hopefully it won't be a big as a Laser Disk.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

> Hopefully it won't be a big as a Laser Disk.

I hope they release "Dragon's Lair" on it, for the nostalgia value if nothing else.

[measmyself]

What article is everyone else reading?

Im confused, but I was reading about the development of a disk primarily for storage uses, and everyone else is talking about why they dont need it for their consumer uses.

Just like right now where Sony develop reliable tape storage used by industry and professionals for years, they plan to offer optical storage.

The Sony consumer and professional worlds are very different.

[Anonymous Coward]

300 GB in 2015?

So they say, in mid-2013. Let's give them the benefit of doubt, and say this "2015" slips only by one year (but really, more than a few years, if it ever happens). By that time, we will have needed (well, "wanted"), 300GB pen drives, not a cd-sized cartridges. We might need / want 3TB cartridges. But they won't be available by 2022, by which time, we will have needed / wanted 30 TB :)

[BigAndos]

Cheaper Downloads Please

For me, this would be a complete non-story if only film & tv downloads were more competitively priced. I would switch to buying films online and give up on disks altogether, but iTunes still charge way too much for downloads and I haven't found a good alternative! It can be £25 for a series when you can buy the dvd boxset for £10 or less online.

Netflix has a lot of stuff but not everything, but I don't like the idea of not owning content in case they go bankrupt etc. Blinkbox seems worth looking at for a wider range of new content, but when you can buy a film on a physical disk outright for £5 in Tesco it is hard to justify paying rental fees. They also don't seem to be economical if you want to watch a long TV series.

[sjsmoto]

And then we'll see another Star Wars boxed set .

[tempemeaty]

Not blue ray again...please...no

I don't want to suffer Sony making backroom deals with the movie industry to skirt end user choice thereby cheating their way to a dominant position.

I want a Toshiba 300GB HD-DVD disk that is affordable and not like Sony's over priced over controlled Blue-ray(blue blood?) disaster.

[MJI]

Re: Not blue ray again...please...no

1) There were no backroom deals. But Various Hollywood studios are owned by various hardware companies.

2) BluRay was a collaberation between a lot of companies including Phillips, Panasonic and Sony.

3) Only Toshiba of the big Japanese manufacturers made HD-DVD.

4) Sony guaranteed Blu Rays success by including a drive in the PS3.

5) PS3 drove the success of BD and the hard disk and media capabilites killed off HD-DVD

[Dave Stevens]

HD-DVD?

That was never a serious format.

The issues with blu-ray were the use of a caddy to protect the disk (which was solved in January 2005) and Java vs Microsoft's HDi.

The problem with blu-ray now is that they cram so many special features and alternate sound track that you can't get much more than 3 hours of playtime. Studios will stupidly release a huge box set with 3 discs because some market study must have shown that the average George thinks huge box means high value. You guys wanted that on 12 disks? Really?

Microsoft's fixation on HD-DVD was to stall the adoption of HD physical media hoping to make a fortune on streaming. Buy a digital copy on the cloud. Yeah, sure.

The studios dropped the format that was not viable. It's as simple as that.

[Christian Berger]

Re: HD-DVD?

I'm sorry, but the caddy issue with blu-ray wasn't solved, the majority of disks are still without caddy making them unusual in home installations.