A startup named Folio Photonics is working on a new physical media format that may replace Blu-ray by offering much greater capacity than Sony’s option. According to an email that TechRadar recently received from Steve Santamaria, CEO of Folio Photonics, the initial capacity of the company’s first disc will be 1 TB, with 10 TB+ of capacity being targeted by the end of the decade. The first drives will cost $3,000 to $5,000.
From a TechRadar report:
The startup has already disclosed on its side that media will cost around $3 per TB, which puts the price of a single disc at $3. Travis Johnston, Director, Market Strategy at Folio Photonics added, “While the actual specs have not yet been published, we believe this capacity and suggested price point to be highly achievable due to our materials/manufacturing innovations.”
Folio Photonics optical disc drive (ODD) will unfortunately command a steep premium in the range of $3,000 to $5,000 at least initially. Like CD, then DVD and Blu-ray writers, cost efficiencies through economies of scale – as Folio’s technology gains adoption – and reusing existing supply chains are likely to slash that by at least one order of magnitude if things go to plan.
Blu-ray is an optical disc format that Sony first introduced to the market in 2003, popularized by devices that include the PlayStation 3. It offers much greater capacity than DVD, a format that it successfully replaced, making it suitable for high-definition material. Blu-ray is available in 25 GB (single layer), 50/66 GB (dual layer), and 100/128 GB (BDXL) capacities.
Discussion (19 replies)
Join Discussion →Man that was sounding good until it was 7 years to hit 10tb. Give me 5tb today and I'd buy a few of these to enable ease of offsite cold storage backups.
1TB? I'd only need 176 of them for a single backup...
They need to reallocate one zero.
Instead of 1TB with a $3,000 drive, make it 10TB with a $300 drive.
1TB is honestly so small that I'd not want it even if it was dirt cheap.
Yeah, I am struggling to find who this is for.
It's too small for enterprise users. Also too small for enthusiast users, who would likely also balk at the price. And WAY too expensive for typical home users.
It's not for video distribution, because that has pretty much moved to streaming, and even so, the market for people who would be willing to buy a $3000 DVD player has to be vanishingly small.
Who is going to buy and use this?
They'd be better off trying to first find a mass market for it, and then drive down the cost through economies of scale, because in its current form I just don't see an appropriate application for it.
I hate to say it but for now, as we've known it, physical media is dead. I admit it's been a few months since the last time I checked but I have been periodically looking for a new 4K BD player, to replace a dying one, for about 1-2 years now and haven't really seen much from the manufacturers. I think there are only 2 or 3 big names still making them.
I agree though, 10 TB or go home. A 1 TB is a stopgap that would still encourage compression shenanigans sooner than later. On the other hand, I haven't crunched the numbers for HDMI 2.1 to get a better grasp of what it could fully support and then how that would translate to 2+ hours on a disc. I just know that 4K authoring, while improved, still doesn't seem as maxed as it could be.
Price? $3K-heck I won't even pay much more than $200 for a standalone player these days.
Yea I got a Panasonic blue ray player last year for Christmas I'm yet to hook up to my TV. Sigh..
I have a bluray drive which I connect to my PC to rip the contents to my media library. I've never once watched a bluray straight from the disk.
I like to save both the video and the audio in its native codecs without transcoding for max quality. This results in somewhat large mkv', but IMHO it is worth it, and is why I hate to see more and more content go to streaming.
If there were a video content service that would allow me to pre-download a premium bitrate file and watch it offline I'd be rather interested. I don't want the weak sauce bitrates you get on streaming services.
Which drive do you like? I've been looking into this for about 2 years now and still haven't committed but I'm really thinking of doing it.
I was thinking of this as well. Physical media doesn't need to exist but the streaming compression game prevents me from wanting to completely give up on it. I'm o.k. with some 1080p, HBO Max is pretty good, but 4K is smoke and mirrors still.
I should specify for 4K BD. I've been ripping BD/DVD for years but never upgraded my optical drive for it but have done a lot of research about them.
You know. I haven't used it since the move, and I can't remember what model it is anymore.
I'll have to find it and get back to you.
I'm not an expert on different models. I just have this one, and it has worked for me.
They're targeting the enterprise. Commercial availability isn't expected until 2026, according to the TechRadar link.
In three years time, 1TB will be even smaller than it is today :p
That 10TB drive is what counts but not by 2030. I need that today. Sigh....
I might as well just copy-paste this from the linked TR article:
Judging from the other articles about Folio Photonics from the same site, it looks like they already have 100TB+ cartridges in mind.
These seem like ambitious goals for a startup company that lacks the name recognition and resources of a company such as Sony. I'm not sure what makes them confident they can succeed here, but perhaps that's mentioned in one of the articles that I barely skimmed.
I'm clearly not their target market, though I wish consumers had better options for cold storage.