DV Info Net - Sony to drop XDCam and BluRay Products

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/70284

ony to abandon further development of its Professional Disc for Data

Sony has decided to abandon any further development of its Professional Disc for Data (PDD). The PDD is a cartridge disc that can store up to 23 gigabytes of data and is a professional version of the Blu-ray disc. The drives of this type were launched in the middle of 2004, in response to Plasmon's Ultra Density Optical (UDO) system. According to its own statements, however, Plasmon in conjunction with HP has a market share of 95 percent in the field of professional optical libraries. UDO storage media can store up to 30 gigabytes of data on each side. Their 5.25-inch cartridges are compatible with magneto-optical storage media and can hence be integrated into existing MO libraries -- an advantage apparently rated higher by many customers than the somewhat higher transfer rates of PDD. Anzeige

The original plan was for the storage capacity and transfer rates of PDD to double from generation to generation every two to three years. To achieve this Sony intended among other steps to use drives with two read/write heads. This approach has come to naught, however. The PDD roadmap has disappeared from the official website. Sony will continue to sell its first-generation drives until the end of next year. Support for the devices would be maintained up until 2014, Sony has stated. The company has moreover vowed that the storage media will continue to be available beyond that date.

As an alternative to its approach so far the company would concentrate on Blu-ray discs without cartridges, which had the potential to replace the customers' extant DVD libraries, the company declared. The development of the Professional Disc for Broadcast (XDCam) and of the Japanese cartridge variant of the Blu-ray disc would according to Sony not be affected by the termination of the further development of PDD.