According to Yahoo! News
Sony will launch a new optical disc
format in November which can hold 23.3GB of data. The company announced these
new discs on Tuesday and added that the format will use a blue laser.
Current CD and DVD formats work with a red laser but because a blue laser has a
shorter wavelength, it can make a
much smaller spot on the recording layer of the disc. A smaller spot means less
space is needed to record one bit of data, and so more data can be
stored:
 The format, called Professional Disc for Data, is being
positioned by the Tokyo company as a replacement for the 5.25-inch MO
(Magneto-Optical) disc format that it currently sells in the professional
data storage sector. MO has been on the market for around 15 years, and
the highest-capacity version sold by Sony can store 9.1GB per
disc.
Coming Soon
Sony will put on sale an internal drive, BW-F101, and
write-once (recordable) and rewritable versions of Professional Disc
media, PDDWO23 and PDDRW23 respectively, in major world markets beginning
in November, says Aki Shimazu, a spokesperson for Sony in
Tokyo.
The first-generation drive will cost around $ 3300,
and blank media will cost between $ 45 and $ 50 per disc for both types,
according to Shimazu, as well as Sony's marketing center for the format.
That's roughly the price Sony promised when it first unveiled the format
in prototype form earlier this year.
As MO technology continues to improve, Sony has plans to
increase the capacity and sustained write transfer rate of Professional
Disc, beyond the 23.3GB and 9 megabytes per second that are features of
the first products to be launched in November.
Sony's roadmap has two steps, the first in 2005 when
transfer rate will be increased to 18 MBps and capacity increased to 50GB
through the addition of a second recording layer in the discs. The second
step is scheduled for 2007, when transfer rate and capacity will be
doubled again to 36 MBps and 100GB, respectively--the latter through the
use of double-sided discs, says Sony.
The new format is related to the Blu-ray Disc video disc
format that Sony launched earlier this year. Both formats store the same
amount of data on cartridges that look almost identical (with Blu-ray
having additional 25GB and 27GB versions), though the data transfer rates
to the discs are different. Blu-ray, which is designed to record
high-definition television, records at a rate of 4.5 MBps, or half the
rate of Professional Disc.
Irreconcilable Differences
These differences mean the two formats, although similar,
are incompatible.
While that incompatibility may sound like a disadvantage
for consumers, Sony says the two are targeted at different markets, so it
shouldn't cause a problem. It also means Sony has full control over the
Professional Disc format, which it developed alone, unlike Blu-ray, which
is controlled by a consortium of nine companies, of which Sony is
one. |
To protect the Sony discs from dirt and dust they are enclosed
in cartridges. Too bad the price of the discs is rather high, not to mention the
price of the recording hardware. But, as the article adds, Sony is not the only company looking at utilizing
blue-laser technology for data storage so perhaps due to competition prices will
go down soon.
For instance Plasmon, a Cambridge, UK-based data storage systems
company, has developed its own format, called UDO (Ultra Density Optical), which
can hold 30GB of data (future roadmaps include 60GB and 120GB versions). Besides
that Toshiba and NEC are also developing a blue-laser based format called
Advanced Optical Disc. The format can store 20GB on a single-layer, single-sided
disc or 36GB on a dual-layer.
Source: Yahoo! News
