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Sony follows TDK to offer Blu-ray media

Sony Electronics, Inc. yesterday announced the launch of its 25GB single layer Blu-ray media with its AccuCORE technology.

Sony is now the second of two companies offering Blu-ray media in the write-once form with TDK being the first. Sony Electronics' version of the single layer Blu-ray media will feature the following:
  • Scratch Guard - hard coating that resists scratches, dust and static;
  • Archival Reliability - special material design that prevents data and image corruption and deterioration to ensure quality playback;
  • Stable Writing - a uniform and precise cover layer that reduces fluctuation as the disc spins
  • Temperature Durability - a high-precision disc structure helps prevent warping during severe changes in temperature and humidity.
We're sure most higher quality Blu-ray media will have similar technologies to ensure reliability as Sony's version. The media is rated at 2X and will provide data transfer rates of up to 72Mb/sec. Pricing information is similar to TDK's scheme at $20 and $25 for the single layer Blu-ray write-once and rewritable media respectively.

Sony also plans to offer 50GB dual layer Blu-ray media in June of this year with retail prices of $48 and $60 for write-once and rewritable versions.

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50gb for $50?
By collegeguypat on 5/6/2006 12:59:25 PM , Rating: 2
Wait, can't you buy an 80gb harddrive for under $50 most of the time?




RE: 50gb for $50?
By Staples on 5/6/2006 1:12:19 PM , Rating: 2
What about the size and durability differences?

I remember when the first 700MB CD-R disks came out, they were at leat $50 each.


RE: 50gb for $50?
By Griswold on 5/6/2006 3:03:04 PM , Rating: 2
What kind of durability are we talking here? The kind of durability (decades) that is still unknown for CDs and DVDs?

If longterm data security is of no concern to you, BR (or DVD or HD-DVD) might just be what you need. Otherwise, a simple portable HDD is much better, despite being more clumsy.


RE: 50gb for $50?
By Lifted on 5/6/2006 3:09:37 PM , Rating: 2
Nobody expects HDD's too laste for decades. That is for tapes, and tapes alone. A 400/800GB tape can be had for $100, and will last much longer than a hard drive, and is much more durable during storage. No electronics (other than some tiny bit of flash on some newer tapes) and no tiny motors, heads, etc. to break.

Optical media will not be used for long term storage as long as tapes are around. This is just marketing hype by Sony and the other manufacturers trying to push their new format and wares.


RE: 50gb for $50?
By Eris23007 on 5/8/2006 8:45:31 PM , Rating: 2

Yes but will there be a compatible tape drive with which to read the media in 50+ years?

///doubts it
//wishes for decent archival solution
/thinks there's a ton of money to be made in this market


RE: 50gb for $50?
By SunAngel on 5/6/2006 1:42:12 PM , Rating: 1
Yes you can. However, with HDDs there are addition costs and risks with the biggest being HDD failure. But HDDs have an advantage and that is rewriteablility. If weighting the pros and cons look to RAID levels for comparability. RAID 0 offers increased performance. I view this ass similiar to HDD advantage of writeability. Yet, RAID 1 offer redundance. I view this ass similiar to the Blu-Ray (or any media) disks. Plus, in this day and age with fuel costs rising at suck and fast rate, I'd rather have something that is not gong to cost me a constant energy source. Plus, disks are inherently quiet and don't make a lot of noise when not beening used.


RE: 50gb for $50?
By MrSmurf on 5/6/2006 1:59:05 PM , Rating: 1
wow, you completely managed to miss the biggest advanges of storing data on a disc; it's portablity and small size.


RE: 50gb for $50?
By Sunday Ironfoot on 5/6/2006 2:11:12 PM , Rating: 2
Actually collegeguypat is right. Seagate's massive 750GB hard drive costs $500, a Bluray drive and 15x 50GB discs will cost around $1250 to $1500. And if you stack 15 discs together they almost equal the weight and thickness of a typical 3.5" hard drive.

BluRay doesn't seem very ecconomical at the moment, but obviously the price will drop sooner or later.


I hate it
By Missing Ghost on 5/6/2006 2:52:01 PM , Rating: 1
I won't buy one. Ever.




RE: I hate it
By mushi799 on 5/6/2006 4:12:33 PM , Rating: 2
You probably said the same thing about DVDs and yet you have one right now


RE: I hate it
By vtohthree on 5/6/2006 4:54:19 PM , Rating: 2
If Sony does this right, then this will be a huge hit. I think it's great that Blueray can hold 25gb's on a single layer, and that it can be had on a quad layer format as well. As long as it is friendly to the consumer, lots of hardware competition would help too, and no hurdles to get do a simple backup. As long as they aren't arrogant with their prices and hardware, I'm willing to do away with DVD's once the prices actually mature for this product...if they do.


RE: I hate it
By Xavian on 5/6/2006 5:25:35 PM , Rating: 2
DVD's only required a new player, Blu-ray needs a whole new system in order to play. (HDCP-compliant TV and Player) Plus the image quality benefits between VHS and DVD was far more noticeable then DVD to HD-DVD or Blu-ray, and lets not forget the cherished BD+ and ROM-Mark 'way over the top' DRM integrated into Blu-Ray.

Forgive me if i dont buy into either format for a long time to come, i may just wait for HVD when it comes along and give this format war a miss.


RE: I hate it
By Hypernova on 5/6/2006 6:23:09 PM , Rating: 2
Indeed, what HVD's are capable of is in anthoer class entirly.


RE: I hate it
By dali71 on 5/6/2006 6:54:06 PM , Rating: 2
http://engadget.com/search/?q=constraint

Universal and Sony have decided not to use ICT on their HD movies for now. I'm sure that in a few years they will implement it, but for the time being you will be able to view your HD movies at the proper resolution without purchasing a new display (assuming that you already have a HD capable unit). Apparently the backlash from their previous stance was much worse than they had anticipated.


the end of tape backups?
By cciesquare on 5/6/2006 2:14:30 PM , Rating: 1
What got me was 72Mb/sec. For 25GB that's ~6mins.

I am burning 4.5GB now for about the same time.

I wonder how hot the disc will be after you eject it. I dont know anything about how laser mechanics work, but i would guess the laser burning the disc would have to be pretty hot.

Imagine opening up the drive and looking at the laser while its on ;P




By Sunday Ironfoot on 5/6/2006 2:35:35 PM , Rating: 2
Sure you don't mean 46 mins? 72 Mb/sec = 9 MB/sec.


RE: the end of tape backups?
By Tyler 86 on 5/6/2006 2:52:05 PM , Rating: 3
Sony plans an x8 standard, is looking at 12x, and TDK already has plans for 250 GB disks...

36 megabits (4.5 megabytes) at 1x (~833 RPM), 72 megabits (9 megabytes) at 2x (~1,666 RPM), 288 megabits (36 megabytes) at 8x (~6,666 RPM), 432 megabits (54 megabytes) at 12x (~10,000 RPM)...

At 4x (3,333 RPM) it'll still be quiet...

It's not going to put the IDE cable standard out of commission any time soon, but that's still incredibly fast.

25GB in ~314 seconds (~5 minutess)...

Very impressive.
Write speed may go even higher with better drives and media without an increase in rotational speed.

They get as about warm as CDs and DVDs do when they get burned.

Cost of drive + media is not as cheap as multiple drives, but versus size, weight, reliability, and distribution, Blu-ray takes the win.

HD-DVDs are competing for that same market niche, but I think Blu-ray's a better fit.

With time, the market will tell.


RE: the end of tape backups?
By Tyler 86 on 5/6/2006 2:53:40 PM , Rating: 2
Oh.. I did the math wrong too, the 25GB disks are 23552 MB, 2616 seconds... ~43 minutes.


RE: the end of tape backups?
By cciesquare on 5/7/2006 12:50:53 PM , Rating: 2
hahahaha i should have used a calculator. No more doing math in my head.


Great for backups
By reiters on 5/6/2006 9:50:30 PM , Rating: 2
I would never use hard drives for long term backup, especially a raid setup. If I needed to recover financial data 5 years from now, where am I going to get a controller that supports the raid layout on the drives. So should I keep spare controllers with the drives? I work as a system admin in a small company and would love to backup 50G every week as a snapshot stored in an external location. Im not going to carry a new hard drive home every week and store them in my closet. 52 hard drives a year...that could get messy.

I can wait till the media drops in price. We all know it will. I also don't like tapes because of the sequencial access vs. random access. Makes recovering a single excel spreadsheet much easier if it's random access. There can be hardware issues with tape drives as well, but not as bad as raid hard drives.




RE: Great for backups
By leptoo on 5/6/2006 10:26:05 PM , Rating: 2
Your work might change from day to day, but why would you need to save 52 complete backups?


RE: Great for backups
By Eris23007 on 5/8/2006 8:50:05 PM , Rating: 2

Just one thought: large public company that is legally required (thank you very much, Sarbanes-Oxley) to archive all email communications and many other such ridiculous expenses.

And our political classes wonder why companies are "all the sudden" deciding not to have their HQ here or list their stocks on our markets... $$$$$$$$ expensive laws!


Be the First!
By bpurkapi on 5/6/2006 1:20:23 PM , Rating: 2
Early adoption of any technology comes with a high price, some have the money to burn, but me i'm just a college student so I wait...




RE: Be the First!
By collegeguypat on 5/6/2006 1:58:03 PM , Rating: 2
I'm just a poor college student too, i want the disks to be under $5 each so i can afford to backup my computer for under $100. Too bad thats going to be a year or so away.


compact
By swatX on 5/7/2006 2:39:08 PM , Rating: 2
they need to start focusing on making the discs compact. i mean i dont want see anyone carrying these disc 10 years from now




RE: compact
By swatX on 5/7/2006 2:39:37 PM , Rating: 2
i meant more compact that it already is


PS3
By chuckabner on 5/7/06, Rating: 0
RE: PS3
By jkostans on 5/7/2006 3:23:34 AM , Rating: 2
lol, I know you're kidding... hopefuly....


RE: PS3
By chuckabner on 5/8/2006 2:57:08 AM , Rating: 1
of course...but honestly who the hell is thinking this crap up at sony!!! every single proprietary format they have created has or will bomb, how can such a huge$$$$ company be so blind. I will never understand such stupidity. Yes the PS3/Blue-ray will be amazing, but how the hell are you going to make profit when nobody buys them. By the time these things come down in price, competing formats will already have a massive lead. Who in charge is thinking to themselves "hey, people wont mind replacing their movie collection at 40$ a pop, or paying 700$ for an awesome gaming system."


By Eug on 5/6/2006 9:07:59 PM , Rating: 2
The lack of dual-layer media for the time being is turning out to be a significant issue for the launch of Blu-ray. Insiders have been complaining that the VC-1 and H.264 authoring tools for Blu-ray movies are sub-par. Thus, they have been using Sony's MPEG2 authoring solution for Blu-ray.

What this means is that the studios are forced to try to cram HD MPEG2 movies and extras on 25 GB single-layer Blu-ray discs. (Blu-ray launch titles are all MPEG2.) With long movies, this can be a significant issue.

In contrast, dual-layer 30 GB media is the norm in the HD DVD camp, giving an extra 5 GB space per disc. However, more importantly, good VC-1 authoring tools are already available so disk space is much less of a worry, since VC-1 is more efficient than MPEG2 at compression. (VC-1 HD DVD discs are already out in North America.) In addition, Toshiba Japan is apparently encoding H.264 for some of the studios too. (H.264 HD DVDs are already out in Japan.)

The irony of all this is that for the time being, HD DVD not only holds more data than Blu-ray, it also generally uses less of that data for movies, effectively giving HD DVD even more free space for long movies or extras and such.

It will be interesting to see how all this plays out over the next year.




Rated at 2X?
By timmiser on 5/9/2006 3:27:13 AM , Rating: 2
How can we be at 2X speed already since this is obviously a first generation media and players?




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