30 Blu-ray Discs In a 1.5TB MiniDisc-Like Cassette 247
MrSeb writes "Hot on the heels of the most successful storage mediums of all time — MiniDisc and Zip disks — Sony has announced the Optical Disc Archive, a system that seems to cram up to 30 Blu-ray discs into a single, one-inch-thick plastic cassette, which will have a capacity of between 300GB and 1.5TB. As far as I can tell, the main selling point of the Optical Disc Archive is, just like MiniDisc, the ruggedness of the cassettes. Optical discs themselves are fairly resistant to changes in temperature and humidity, and the cassettes are dust and water resistant. What is the use case for these 1.5TB MiniDiscs, though? In terms of pure storage capacity, tape drives are still far superior (you can store up to 5TB on a tape!) In terms of speed and flexibility, hard drives are better. If you're looking for ruggedness, flash-based storage is smaller, lighter, and can easily survive a dip in the ocean. The Optical Disc Archive might be good as extensible storage for TV PVRs, like TiVo and Sky+ — but as yet, we don't even know the cost of the system or the cassettes, and I doubt either will be cheap."
Sony? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does it have the XCP trojan installed by default? Will they sell you 5 tb and take four of them back with the first "upgrade"?
No, thanks. I'd rather use floppies than buy ANYTHING from Sony. I wish everyone else would stop shoveling money at these evil people as well. I doubt there's a less trustworthy entity on the planet.
Re:Sony? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sony? (Score:5, Funny)
Don't get in his way, he's on a "ranting roll," and once the sony-bashing boulder has started going, there's no stopping it.
Re:Sony? (Score:5, Insightful)
once the sony-bashing boulder has started going, there's no stopping it
True enough, but Sony built the hill.
Re:Sony? (Score:5, Funny)
and possibly the boulder
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and i just got rid of my 8 track...
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and i just got rid of my 8 track...
Speaking of MiniDisc, couldn't that be described as an "ATRAC cartridge"?
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If they built the boulder it would fall apart halfway down the hill and only roll in a country it was region-locked to.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sony? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would at least consider buying it, if Sony would promise not to sue me if I actually used it.
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You do realize that the 3.5 inch floppy came AFTER the 5 inch floppy, which came after the eight inch floppy, right? And that I didn't say a 3.5 inch floppy?
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His post was correct. It may not be a relevant response to your post, but the 3.5" floppies were based on a Sony design, so his response was perfectly 100% correct and informative.
OTOH, that was 30 years ago, so "Offtopic" might be a better moderation.
WINNER (Score:2)
Re:Sony? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish everyone else would stop shoveling money at these evil people
They are, and in increasing numbers
Sony posts its worst loss ever
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-04-10/japan-sony-earnings/54144022/1 [usatoday.com]
says it all really, treat your customers with contempt and they will make sure you cease to exist, one way or another
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If that was the case, Microsoft and most other large companies would be out of business by now.
I disagree. I'm in no way a Microsoft fan, but their business plan is to try to provide products that their customers will want to buy. Sony's seems to be to punish their customers of one division for not also being sufficiently good customers of another division.
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Does it have the XCP trojan installed by default? Will they sell you 5 tb and take four of them back with the first "upgrade"?
My guess is it'll be released after 1.5 TB SSDs are widely available, yet somehow cost more. And I'll have to warn my family away from buying it, because they had a good experience with a Sony reel to reel tape player 40 years ago, therefore this must be pretty good too.
I doubt there's a less trustworthy entity on the planet.
Anyone in the .gov, anyone in mass media, anyone in marketing, anyone in finance, GM ... Least trustworthy computer hardware mfgr on the planet, yeah, I think they fairly easily meet that..
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Just the BDR media by itself without any sort of fancy caddy is going to be more expensive than any other option available.
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Just the BDR media by itself without any sort of fancy caddy is going to be more expensive than any other option available.
And when they first came out, 3.5" floppies cost almost $70 per box of ten; now you can get 100 for less than that. Why shouldn't we expect comparable price drops for the BDR media for this device?
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This strange Sony device will still be the most expensive option available as everything else will experience the same price drops.
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Re:Sony? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is Sony... remember "memory sticks" where they cost 5 times as much as CF or SD, simply because... they could?
"Special Sony BDR media" will almost certainly be the only kind that will work in the caddy and will cost at least $25 per disk... I would be shocked if Sony allowed its victims to use commodity products instead of Sony brand BDR.
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Anyone buying a Sony product these days should have their head examined. I'm not going to bother listing the numerous ways they've fucked over their customers over the last decade (at least), but it's enough for me to greet every new product of theirs with a great, big middle finger.
Then again, it seems there's always someone ready to throw money at Sony for their newest piece of fucking shit that doesn't do what it's goddamned supposed to [youtube.com].
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Anyone buying a Sony product these days should have their head examined. I'm not going to bother listing the numerous ways they've fucked over their customers over the last decade (at least), but it's enough for me to greet every new product of theirs with a great, big middle finger.
I am willing to give them a new chance now that they're rid of Howard Stringer and are restructuring.
Sony used to stand for quality and functionality, and it can go there again even if it's far from it right now.
Re:Sony? (Score:4, Interesting)
I am willing to give them a new chance now that they're rid of Howard Stringer and are restructuring.
Bear in mind that Stringer became CEO in 2005, and from what I understand Sony's perceived decline (in Slashdotters' view) began during the 1990s, so I doubt he's solely to blame.
Also bear in mind that- as others pointed out in the recent Sony jobs cut thread- the bits of Sony where the "evil" is occurring are actually doing quite well [slashdot.org] so this is "not Sony getting what _should_ be coming to them".
Sorry, but this is another example of Slashdotters' tunnel vision, forgetting that though such issues might matter to them, they're a much smaller and less influential (if somewhat atypical) part of the market than they'd like to think, and the great unwashed in general really do not give a toss about rootkit CDs, the loss of Linux on the PS3, and other such behaviours- even if they ought to.
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Bear in mind that Stringer became CEO in 2005, and from what I understand Sony's perceived decline (in Slashdotters' view) began during the 1990s, so I doubt he's solely to blame.
I'd say the end of the 90s, when Sony's former leader, Norio Oga, stepped down and made two WTF choices - Udei to lead the bigger Sony conglomerate, and Stringer to lead the US division. Oga had risen in the ranks from the floor to the top, and led Sony from good to great, with a focus on quality. His successors, on the other hand, were pure suits with a focus on short term profits.
I still have hope that Sony can get back to its roots as a company led by those who know the business from the ground up, and
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I have to assume the summary was being sarcastic: "...the most successful storage mediums of all time â" MiniDisc and Zip disks." Minidisc is a bit like the Betamax of our generation, and Zip was prone to data loss.
1.5 TB divided by 30 discs == 50 gig each. Why? Another company has already developed a Bluray disc that can hold 1 terabyte all by itself (100 GB per layer times 10 layers). Strange that Sony would rather sell 30 discs in a cartridge instead of just 1. Not very efficient.
Re:Sony? (Score:5, Funny)
Strange that Sony would rather sell 30 discs in a cartridge instead of just 1. Not very efficient.
Not strange at all, just Sony doing what Sony does...they just love their proprietary formats. Why sell a disc when you can create a cartridge of discs that only Sony produces hardware capable of reading? Might as well call it Memory Stick 2: Electric Boogaloo...
Re:Sony? (Score:5, Interesting)
JVC, Sharp, Pioneer, Panasonic all made MD players. They were all easy to find in the UK too. Apparently they weren't too popular in the US but I guess that just goes to show that people valued Sony's brand more. That's not their fault or a bad thing (for them).
Aside from Betamax and their memory sticks (which should have died straight away) they don't actually have that many proprietary formats. CDs, blu-ray, DVD, and blu-ray have all been developed with at least Phillips. Along with the hardware, minidisc software produced by numerous companies and the the PS3 uses standard hard drives and USB connections unlike the 360 with its over priced proprietary drives.
Sony has done some stupid things, like every other company but people still talk about shit that's not even that true and the fact people still seem to be so butt-hurt over memory sticks just goes to show there isn't actually that many instances of closed formats to complain about.
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I'd say that's pre
Re:Sony? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, Sony has done plenty to legitimately earn the scorn of its customers. Still, I myself am one of those who would readily spend money for the right Sony product. I've bought exactly four pieces of hardware from Sony. The PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP. I don't regret any of those purchases, and I fully expect to buy the PS4 when it comes out. I'll probably get the PS Vita eventually as well.
There are two reasons I won't shy away from those purchases. First, I can hardly imagine a feasible scenario where I would withhold money from a company as punishment for a past action. Perhaps in protest an ongoing action such as "I won't buy anything from this company until they stop donating money to terrorist organization X every month." Other than that, I'll take how trustworthy I consider a company into consideration, but ultimately choose the option that provides me the greatest benefit.
There are games exclusive to Sony's system that more than justify buying those gaming consoles in my eyes. It doesn't hurt that I don't believe I've ever actually been harmed by any of Sony's actions, which makes it easier to take a logical rather than emotional approach.
The second reason I'll buy from them is that, whatever laws are in place, I don't consider a corporation a person. Kaz Hirai became the new President and CEO of Sony two weeks ago. What kind of turnover have other executives had? Who was actually responsible for the decisions you loathe, and how many of them even still work for Sony?
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My PS3 experience has me pretty soured on buying more Playstation stuff. I don't really care about the whole OtherOS thing - why would I bother buying a video game console to run Linux? What bugs me is the constant "system updates" that take forever right when you started up the machine to do something, and can't be skipped or delayed. And the network going down, losing my personal information and making other things, like Netflix instant view (god only knows why that needs PSN to work, but that's another b
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I've bought exactly four pieces of hardware from Sony.
That's interesting, as four is also the number of PS3's I've gone through with YLOD.
First, I can hardly imagine a feasible scenario where I would withhold money from a company as punishment for a past action.
I generally agree with you, as things do change. But I draw the line at continuing to do business with a company that will not provide proper customer support short of legal action. In that regard, Sony has joined my short list alongside HP. There need to be some standards.
There are games exclusive to Sony's system that more than justify buying those gaming consoles in my eyes.
And I've spent nearly $900 out-of-pocket trying to get just one working 60 GB PS3. No exclusive library is worth that.
What kind of turnover have other executives had? Who was actually responsible for the decisions you loathe, and how many of them even still work for Sony?
They have yet to disavow past mi
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Just because they've made a few fuck ups doesn't mean I'm going to purposely pay more for a TV.
Yes, because Sony, of all brands, is known for it's cheap products. Give me a fucking break...Sony's been charging premium prices for it's shit for decades, the only difference is that once upon a time, it was actually worth it.
My Sony CD player still works as new over 20 years later. [...] my Sony MD players are still like new and I even pulled out my walkman last year to see if it works and it does.
I haven't used a music CD, outside of an automobile, in literally years. I haven't actually purchased a music CD since the early 2000's. How long do you think you'll even be able to buy physical CDs? That working CD player is going to look nice stacked on top of the Laserdisc pla
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Do you have any idea how many things nowadays you use which were created by Sony, contributed to by Sony, or derived from Sony tech? No?
Seriously, this shit is getting old. Judge technology by its merits, not by what one single tiny division of a megacorporation may have done to irritate you.
Re:Sony? (Score:5, Insightful)
Buying computer hardware from a company that has deliberately installed malware on their paying customers' computers is brain-dead stupid.
Re:Sony? (Score:4, Informative)
VCR? Nope. It's JVC technology.
Laserdisc player? Nope. Philips.
Cassette player? Nope. Philips again.
DVR? Nope.
CD? Yep.
DVD? Nope.
Re:Sony? (Score:4, Informative)
>>>the result of JVC ripping off Sony's plans for Betamax
Uh. No. Sony's Betamax used U-loading whereas JVC followed a different route called M-loading. The M loading also proved better for camcorders, which is why JVC was able to shrink it to palmsize (VHS-C). Sony could not make recordable Betamax units, so they had to make a separate standard called Video8 which was incompatible with home VCRs.
Also JVC was smart enough to make their tapes 2 hours standard, so they could record a whole movie, instead of just half (like the 1 hour Beta tapes). That time choice is why VHS was more attractive to consumers, and VHS had essentially "won" the war as early as 1980.
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Zip discs (Score:2)
Zip discs one of the most successful storage mediums of all time? Is that a joke?
Re:Zip discs (Score:5, Funny)
Zip discs one of the most successful storage mediums of all time? Is that a joke?
Yes. And you didn't get it.
Zip disks filled a gap reasonably well... (Score:4, Interesting)
Back before USB flash drives were widely and cheaply available, the only way to easily move around more than a few floppy's worth of data was the Zip drive.
100 MB was a lot back then. Even though the drive itself was not ubiquitous, the parallel port model could be easily transported, and it was supported on multiple operating systems. Macs were supported with SCSI. In some institutional environments, you'd find internal IDE zip drives. My local library branch had computers with internal drives, and for a few years it was the primary way I was able to download anything more than about 20 MB off the internet (hi-speed internet unavailable at home).
CD writers were expensive (my original 2X writer was $300), and came with all the problems of read-only media. Of course Zip had its problems - the drive itself wasn't very cheap, nor the disks, and of course there was the click of death... but all in all, it was IMO the most versatile portable storage medium we had between floppy disks and USB flash drives. Lugging around an IDE drive and opening up whatever you wanted to attach it to wasn't always an option :-)
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Wrong: There was also the LS120 drive.
In my experience, LS-120 never had the kind of limited success that Zip drives did. For that matter, there were lots of purported floppy-killers from that time. LS-120 did have the advantage that the drive was mechanically compatible with normal floppy disks, but it still had the same issues with high drive prices, high media prices, and low rates of adoption. Overall, I was always much more likely to find a Zip drive on a computer than an LS-120 drive.
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Yea that is what I tough. Zip Disks? At best it was a fad technology. Between Floppy Disks and Cheap Writable CD's
If you had a Zip Disk, you were basically assuming that you will only be using it with your computer, and not as a mean to ship data to anyone else. As most people didn't have Zip Disks. Unless their PC was bough between 1996-1998, and that is if they decided to pay for the extra feature.
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you sure about that? if you cared about your files back then you'd use magneto-optical drives, which were quite reliable.
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not talking about Syquest, talking about these
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magneto-optical_drive [wikipedia.org]
esp. the Fujitsu offerings seemed quite widespread at the time (a lot of people I knew had the 230MB ones)
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Wait, you are putting Zip disks above CD-Rs in popularity? Or above floppy disks? Either of those formats, in their time, was ubiquitous. Zips come in a distant 3rd there.
And amazingly I have some floppies that have lasted over 10 years and are still readable. During my brief adventure into Zip disks they often wouldn't last 10 days before becoming thoroughly corrupted...
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The difference was that it was rare that a floppy *drive* would be damaged by a seemingly functional floppy disk so badly that it would corrupt/damage any other disks you inserted into it. I saw first hand a single Zip disk permanently damage several Zip drives in a way that they became more or less a vector for a hardware Zip virus!
Though I have heard that was more an issue with the horrible design/manufacturing/quality control of the zip drives as it was disk issues...
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At the time (mid-to-late 90s), the computer labs at college were full of ZIP drives. For a brief time, they became the best way to transfer word docs and homework from dorm computer to lab computer and back. But very short lived (2 years maybe?)
Being a /. member, I was early adopter, so naturally I already had a SCSI controller to support those new CDROM thingies that showed up in the early 90s, so it was naturally to get the SCSI/parallel port version of the ZIP drive. On my computer, SCSI speeds (40MB/sec
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Dude, you fell into the sar-chasm.
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Zip drives were NEVER as ubiquitous as a floppy. A few people might have had them here or there but they were hardly commonplace. They gained some traction but still suffered from being an expensive single vendor solution.
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They gained some traction but still suffered from being an expensive single vendor solution.
That, and the famous click of death. Also the parallel port model was remarkably slow.
Re:Zip discs (Score:4, Informative)
Ah, the click of death... especially impressive when a bad Zip disk could misalign the drive heads badly enough to screw up any other disks inserted. Probably the first widespread example of a computer *hardware* virus...
Re:Zip discs (Score:4, Informative)
Every business that needed to store anything over 5MB had a Zip drive. and that's every business I consulted for in the late 90s.
So maybe not every desktop but every office or 1 out of 5 computers had them.
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Storing something over 5MB? Just use the internal hard drive.
Re:Zip discs (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds crazy, but ZIP disks offered two other advantages:
1: The ability to be set read-only with a password. This was useful back in the day if one wanted a FTP server that an intruder couldn't trash the distributed files on, especially if a SCSI ZIP drive was used which had decent performance at the time.
2: The ability to use a password for protecting data which was hardware enforced. The ZIP 100 was bypassable by the hardware sleep trick, but the ZIP 250 and 750 were not, so other than LEOs with drives which ignored that bit, it was a pretty secure mechanism, especially when combined with a backup utility that did encryption.
ZIP drives were useful... of course, their time is since long gone since a USB flash drive is far more reliable and cheaper for small capacities.
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Every business that needed to store anything over 5MB had a Zip drive. and that's every business I consulted for in the late 90s.
So maybe not every desktop but every office or 1 out of 5 computers had them.
Your experience differs from mine. DAT tape drives were cheaper and more reliable (a bad tape would rarely ruin the drive), and I saw a lot more of those than Bernouilli, Zip and Jaz drives.
And in the late 90s, CD-R had arrived, obsoleting Zip drives nearly overnight.
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Once CD burners hit a certain price point, Zip drives were done for.
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All the marketing folks used them to store their humongous PPT files. And nothing of value was lost.
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Yeah, I never saw a Zip disk for less than about $10. They had reliability issues too. Remember the "click of death"? CD-Rs absolutely killed them with greater reliability, 7 times the capacity and 1/10th the price per disk, and an even larger installed base of CD readers.
Iomega also had one of the worst web sites I'd ever seen. Their home page made you download several megabytes of highly annoying flashing animated images. Would take too long today, but they did that a time when most Internet users
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zip drives, imo, were better because they were smaller and better protected (thus better for carrying around) but it's main problem was iomega controlled them so prices just weren't going to drop where as CD-R speeds and reliability went up while prices went down. Had the zip disk been an open format it possibly would be around now.
What's the use case? (Score:3)
From TFA:
"I can see the Optical Disc Archive filling two niches: quickly transporting large amounts of video across rough terrain; and providing extensible backup for multimedia devices, such as video cameras and TV PVRs, like TiVo and Sky+. Hard drives fill up pretty quickly, and high-density cassettes make a lot more sense than burning single DVD/Blu-ray discs. Unless Sony can get other companies to make and sell ODA drives, though, it will probably just go the way of the MiniDisc."
Re:What's the use case? (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
"Unless Sony can get other companies to make and sell ODA drives, though, it will probably just go the way of the MiniDisc."
Hugely popular in Asia?
Re:What's the use case? (Score:4, Interesting)
From TFA:
"Unless Sony can get other companies to make and sell ODA drives, though, it will probably just go the way of the MiniDisc."
Hugely popular in Asia?
This is true. Got rid of my father's minidisc hardware and discs, all to .jp and local asian sounding names. Crazy popular little things over there, locally no one wants them.
Somehow, I was never quite certain how, their encoding and/or internal design was so much more energy efficient than early mp3 players, that you'd get like 4 times the playtime, despite the storage technology being a rotating disk.
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News story Sony announces NEX-FS700 '4k-ready' E-mount camcorder
http://m.dpreview.com/news/2012/04/02/Sony-4k-ready-NEX-FS700-FS700E-camcorder [dpreview.com]
Sony is planning a future firmware upgrade that will enable the NEX-FS700 to output 4K bit-stream data over 3G HD-SDI when used with an optional Sony 4K recorder.
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Of course, with Blu-Ray prices at about $3-4 apiece for 25 gigabytes, they're about four times as expensive per gigabyte as hard drives, making this false economy by any standards even without factoring in the cost of the cassette.
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Maybe bootnet or 4x4net?
What's wrong with an SATA drive and dock? (Score:2)
I'm sure a single 2TB SATA hard drive is cheaper than the cassette and I know a cheap eSATA dock will be cheaper than ODA system. If you're worried about water, put the drive in a ziploc bag before transporting.
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For SMB grade, you have to burn everything onto mask ROMS. And then blow on them.
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Real enterprises with challenges such as these are not nearly as fussy as you seem to be.
Never mind "SMB grade".
Lost me (Score:5, Funny)
You lost me at "Sony".
Yawn. Sony wants another media format. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think this is just Sony trying once again to replicate its success with the Compact Disc format. It has a long history of making new formats, just to see if they'll catch on. I'm sure it's quite lucrative if one does, but the other aspect of that is the proliferation of bizarre Sony formats that aren't even supported by Sony after some production period. How many versions of the Memory Stick did Sony wind up making? Six? Seven?
Anyway, this is just more of that and I'm sure it will fail and be forgotten soon enough.
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How many versions of the Memory Stick did Sony wind up making?
Depending on how you look at it they either made too little or too many to ruin their reputation amongst some consumers.
Interesting little story. I bought my dad a point-and-shoot camera for Christmas this year. He has a Canon DSLR but doesn't want to haul that around everywhere and was looking for something very small but with good picture quality. I got him a Sony Cyber-Shot camera because A) it got good reviews and B) I got a great deal on it.
So, on Christmas morning when he opens it up the first thin
Dear Slashdot Editors (Score:5, Informative)
Dear Slashdot Editors,
Please edit summaries before they hit the front page. For example, here is TFS with all the bullshit removed. I left the joke in for you, even though Sony didn't create Zip disks... Perhaps the poster meant Memory Stick, Betamax, Magic Gate or one of the other custom Sony formats.
"Hot on the heels of the most successful storage mediums of all time â" MiniDisc and Zip disks â" Sony has announced the Optical Disc Archive, a system that seems to cram up to 30 Blu-ray discs into a single, one-inch-thick plastic cassette, which will have a capacity of between 300GB and 1.5TB. The main selling point of the Optical Disc Archive is, just like MiniDisc, the ruggedness of the cassettes. Optical discs themselves are fairly resistant to changes in temperature and humidity, and the cassettes are dust and water resistant. The article is light on potential uses."
Comment removed (Score:3)
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the problem is from what little we know LTO beats it.. now if it can match LTO and give you good random access (equivalent to Optical media) then they may have something.. but even then given their track record and the target market that would be in interested in the device, and have the money to pay for it, will want to see the standard opened up so that more than just Sony can manufacture it and the media.
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good for backups (Score:2)
Balance (Score:2)
What is the use case for these 1.5TB MiniDiscs, though? In terms of pure storage capacity, tape drives are still far superior (you can store up to 5TB on a tape!) In terms of speed and flexibility, hard drives are better. If you're looking for ruggedness, flash-based storage is smaller, lighter, and can easily survive a dip in the ocean.
Maybe it's a good balance of features. Tapes can hold more, but they're generally slow for accessing files because it's all sequential. This would be slower than hard drives, but perhaps more durable(...?). I'd bet that these are cheaper per TB than Flash. Many times, when picking a solution, there isn't one option that's clearly superior in every way. Instead, you have to pick a solution where the advantages/disadvantages are balanced to meet your needs.
I would guess this will be sold as an archival
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The many headed dragon of Sony (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does Sony keep coming out with "Storage solutions", when the other arm of Sony doesn't want us to save *anything*?
I mean, come on Sony... have you ever considered that those evil pirates are downloading your music/movies because you're giving them the tech to save a billion terrabytes of stuff? What do you think they are going to fill up all that space with?
If computers were only 16mb of ram and a 40mb hard drive, they couldn't save a 4gb movie, now could they? Come-on man, think!
WATCH OUT! (Score:2)
"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone. " - Jack Valenti, 1982
So, given that according to wiki, a VHS tape is "In modern-day digital terminology, VHS is roughly equivalent to 333x480 pixels luma and 40x480 chroma resolutions (333x480 pixels=159,840 pixels or 0.16MP (1/6 of a MegaPixel))" times 4 hours, how many Boston Stranglers is this medium?
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give it up sony (Score:3)
Don't forget about Memory Sticks. The world is holding it's breath for another proprietary storage medium from Sony.
Reasons for optical... (Score:2)
1) Better random access than tape
2) Less fragile than hard drives, designed to be removable
3) Cheaper per-byte than flash
Optical is more expensive than hard drive, so if you're comparing it against removable hard drives, or an HD "toaster" setup (a box in which you can plug raw SATA drives) then the question is one of durability. If that's not an issue, go with plugable hard drives.
Tape is still cheapest, so if random access is not an issue, go with tape.
If cost isn't an
Shiny discs (Score:2)
random access and stable (Score:2)
Tapes are magnetically sensitive; and don't allow quick random access.
Optical disks are fine around magnets/transmitters/EMPs/etc; they have random access.
Re:The most successful storage mediums of all time (Score:5, Funny)
Hear that woosh? That was the sarcasm going right over your head.
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They really screwed up with the minidisk; the nice thing about them was that they would fit in a shirt pocket, and they held (iirc) 250 mb, which is 250 floppies worth of data in the same sized medium as a floppy. You could easily fit a couple of CDs worth of music if compressed to MP3 or Ogg on one. Their problem was they wouldn't work in a slot-based CD player, like in a car where they would have been incredibly handy (car MP3 players hadn't taken off yet).
Of course, I stopped using them after Somy rooted
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Different Division.
Just because it is Sony it doesn't mean they are not going to make products that have competing interests across the department.