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Sony Develops 25 GB Paper Disc
jaaron writes "TOPPAN Printing and Sony today announce the successful development of a 25GB paper disc based on Blu-ray Disc technology. Yes, that's right, *paper*. Details will be announced at the Optical Data Storage 2004 conference to be held from April 18th to April 21st at Monterey, California."
PDF on Blu-Ray Disk.
Here's the full text, but you can see it by simply copying & pasting the URL into a new tab/browser window:
TOPPAN and Sony Successfully Develop 25GB Paper Disc
Tokyo, Japan, Apr 15, 2004 - (JCN Newswire) - TOPPAN PRINTING CO., LTD (TSE: 7911) and Sony Corporation (TSE: 6758) today announce the successful development of a 25GB paper disc based on Blu-ray Disc technology. Details will be announced at the Optical Data Storage 2004 conference to be held from April 18th to April 21st at Monterey, California.
Using the disc-structure of Blu-ray Disc technology, the new paper disc has a total weight that is 51% paper. The two companies jointly began this optical disc project approximately a year ago. Blu-ray Disc is commonly known for allowing more than 2 hours of high-definition program recording.
Hideaki Kawai, Managing Director, Head of Corporate R&D Division, TOPPAN CO., LTD commented: "Using printing technology on paper allows a high level of artistic label printing on the optical disc. Since a paper disc can be cut by scissors easily, it is simple to preserve data security when disposing of the disc".
Masanobu Yamamoto, Senior General Manager of Optical System Development Gp., Optical Disc Development Div., Sony Corporation said: "Since the Blu-ray Disc does not require laser light to travel through the substrate, we were able to develop this paper disc. By increasing the capacity of the disc we can decrease the amount of raw material used per unit of information."
The worldwide production of optical discs is approximately 20 billion per year and optical discs are being adopted widely. The combination of paper material and printing technology is also expected to lead to a reduction in cost per disc and will expand usage.
TOPPAN and Sony will continue development of the disc for practical use.
About Sony Corporation
Sony Corporation (TSE: 6758) is a leading manufacturer of audio, video, game, communications, key device and information technology products for the consumer and professional markets. With its music, pictures, computer entertainment and on-line businesses, Sony is uniquely positioned to be the leading personal broadband entertainment company in the world. Sony recorded consolidated annual sales of approximately $62 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2003. For further information, please visit the Sony Corporation home page at: www.sony.net/
About Toppan Printing Co Ltd.
Toppan Printing Co., Ltd. (TSE: 7911), since its founding in 1900, has played key roles in worldwide leadership of the printing industry, generated global acclaim and US$10 billion in revenues. Today, the Company's operations extend beyond conventional lines of printing and show strong performances in each field, including securities and cards, commercial printing, publications printing, packaging, industrial materials,and electronics. Especially in the electronics field, Toppan boasts the largest share of the world market for liquid-crystal color filters. For further information, please visit the Toppan Printing Co Ltd. home page at: www.toppan.co.jp/english/
Contact:
Sony Corporation
Gerald Cavanagh
Gerald.Cavanagh@jp.sony.com
Tel: +81-3-5448-2200; Fax: +81-3-5448-3061
It's a moot issue anyways... DVD's go through the office paper shredder just fine... the crosscut here that handles 10 sheets at a time destroys CD's and DVD's on a regular basis.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
exactly how long will this paper last before it starts decomposing in some way?
Paper doesn't really decompose unless it's subjected to bacteria, air, water, dirt and stuff.
High quality paper, such as wood-free paper doesn't even yellow much in sunlight.
(Wood-free? You say.. that's paper which is 100% cellulose, with no lignin in it.. lignin is the stuff that separates trees from plants.. without lignin, it's not wood, hence 'wood-free' paper.)
In a good environment (as one could expect for this kind of purpose) paper should have a far greater life-span than any hard drive I've ever owned.
(and I've held on to some of mine for quite some time)
And if you go for something a bit snazzier printer wise like the Epson Color Proofer 7600 you get:
... you have a scanner?"
2880 dpi is 2880x2880 dots per sqaure inch
You have 8.5 x 11 square inches (or pi * 2^2 for a cd sized area)
You have 7 individual colors so lets count a dot for each, and lets go with no error correction (just to get a maximum conceivable).
You end up with 14M / square inch, a big improvement over 9k!
That would give you 1.3G / double sided page, or 182M / double sided cd size.
So Sony's tech here is nearly as big a leap up again as from 300x300dpi@1bit to 2880x2880dpi@7bit! It's a long way from printing quality (forget the fact that you would need to be incredibly redundant to make it any use, forget 10 bit bytes, i'd be thinking 64 bit bytes if it's meant to be lossless storage on the scheme I outlined). Might be fun to try and print out and scan back in say a knoppix cd in as few pages as possible, "what you mean you don't have a cd drive
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
but it doesn't record to paper plates
My wording could have been more clear. The 1541 ACTED like it formatted a paper plate. You'd have to cut the plate, or other piece of cardboard to size, place it in the drive, and then run the format operation. This would proceed and conclude with no error message. This does not mean that the resulting paper disc was ready for Commodore data storage!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.