Once the era of CDs was over, DVDs took over and the Blu-Rays have failed to catch up ever since because of the rise of portable devices like smartphones and tablets. The need for optical discs has drastically reduced over the past of couple of years and in almost a dying industry Sony and Panasonic have announced a new type of disc called as Archival Discs.
With the Archival Discs, Sony and Panasonic are hoping that in the coming years, these Archival discs will set the tone for optical discs. They have released a roadmap that shows optical discs with capacities ranging from 300GB to 1TB. The plan for the companies is to release the 300GB variant during summer 2015.
The specifications of the new Archival discs are as follows –
- Capacity – 300GB (write once)
- Wavelength λ=405 nm (nanometers)
- Numerical Aperture NA=0.85
- Double-sided Disc (3 layers/side), Land and Groove Format
- Track Pitch – 0.225μm (micrometers)
- Data bit length – 79.5nm (nanometers)
- Error Correction Method – Reed-Solomon Code