Panasonic and Sony announce plans for Blue-ray successor

Electronics manufacturing giants Sony and Panasonic have announced their plans to launch a successor to Blue-ray discs. The companies have said that they intend to develop an optical disc which is capable of holding at least 300 gigabytes of data by the end of 2015.

On the other hand, normal dual-layer Blue-rays can hold up to just 50 GB. Earlier, Sony said that the 4K ultra-high-definition movies were likely to take up more than 100 GB of space. The ultra-high-definition movies offer four times the resolution of 1080p video.

Recently, a device was launched which allowed 4K films to be streamed over the internet, but that would have been impractical for people with slow internet access or accounts with data-use limits. However, the companies have not directly referred to the 4K movie sales in their press release, but talked of the wider archive market.

The companies said, “Optical discs have excellent properties to protect them against the environment, such as dust resistance and water resistance, and can also withstand changes in temperature and humidity when stored”. The companies also went on to say that initially they will be targeting businesses that wish to copy and preserve their data.

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