Anyone in the digital archivist community want to weigh in on this, or provide citations to reviews or evaluations?
I’m not sure exactly who the market actually is for these “Archival Discs.” If it was actually those professionally concerned with long-term reliable storage, I would think the press release would include some information on what leads them to believe the media will be especially reliable long-term, compared to other optical media. Which they don’t seem to.
Which makes me wonder how much of the ‘archival’ is purely marketing. I guess the main novelty here is just the larger capacity?
Tokyo, Japan – March 10, 2014 – Sony Corporation (“Sony”) and Panasonic Corporation (“Panasonic”) today announced that they have formulated “Archival Disc”, a new standard for professional-use, next-generation optical discs, with the objective of expanding the market for long-term digital data storage*.
Optical discs have excellent properties to protect themselves against the environment, such as dust-resistance and water-resistance, and can also withstand changes in temperature and humidity when stored. They also allow inter-generational compatibility between different formats, ensuring that data can continue to be read even as formats evolve. This makes them robust media for long-term storage of content. Recognizing that optical discs will need to accommodate much larger volumes of storage going forward, particularly given the anticipated future growth in the archive market, Sony and Panasonic have been engaged in the joint development of a standard for professional-use next-generation optical discs.
Bibliographic Wilderness 