Sony and Panasonic recently announced an agreement to jointly develop standards for a next-generation optical disc that has the capacity to hold more than 300 gigabytes of data (six times the capacity of current Blu-ray Discs) by the end of 2015. According to the two companies, the 300 GB discs are geared toward the archival storage market. Is this project the next-generation of Blu-ray? Or is it the consumer electronics industry’s answer to being ahead of the 4K curve? See below for an analysis. In the joint release issued by both companies, each included reference to the other’s cartridge-based storage solutions that are currently in the market [Keep reading…]