Our relationship with digital media is becoming increasingly ephemeral. If it isn't the fact many of us are working in the cloud these days, it's streaming giants like Netflix unceremoniously nixing shows from its library or Steam gently reminding you that you don't own your digital games. When it comes to anything faintly resembling preservation, let's just say I trust big media corporations about as far as I can throw them, and picking up physical media instead is becoming increasingly appealing by the day.
So, let's have a moment of silence for Sony's last Japanese manufacturing plant producing a number of optical media formats. Closed this month, the factory in Tagajo, Miyagi Prefecture didn't just make ancient formats like MiniDV cassettes and MiniDiscs, but also specifically recordable blu-rays too (though production of other types of blu-rays will continue). Hang on, what's that sound? It's Verbatim and I-O Data rocking up with assurances that optical media isn't dead, promising to continue to supply a steadily shrinking though definitely alive and kicking consumer base (via Tom's Hardware).
Verbatim's statement about its collaboration with I-O data says that together the two companies will provide a stable supply of optical discs to the Japanese market specifically. However, there's not yet an equivalent statement on Verbatim's English-language newsroom leaving optical media's future in other parts of the world looking a little unclear.
But fear not, as there's little indication the supply of optical media is about to dry up in the US and Europe. For one thing, Tom's Hardware dug up some evidence of Verbatim's ongoing commitment to blu-ray support by highlighting the company's Slimline Blu-ray Writer unveiled at this year's CES.
As storage media, discs still have a lot to offer. Besides holding onto favourites dashed from online streaming libraries, blu-rays are capable of a surprising amount of longevity too. For instance, this technical breakdown from the Canadian Conservation Institute lists the longevity of recordable and erasable blu-rays as anywhere between 20 and 50 years. That's nowhere near as long-lasting as, say, carving complaints about dodgy copper into clay, but it's certainly more practical. I'd be remiss not to at least mention M-DISC's blu-rays and DVDs promising "1,000 years or more" of data storage though, uh, that's a claim that is difficult to substantiate.
For comparison's sake, the moving parts of a HDD offer a number of potential points of failure, with something likely to stop working in devices between three and five years old according to less than generous estimates from data protection company Arcserve. Add to that this story from last year about researchers at the University of Shanghai developing a disc that can store up to 200 TB, and optical media is definitely not out for the count yet.
I mean, okay, blu-rays aren't going to cure my increasing existential dread—but they will ensure I've got some banging movies to watch in the Mad Max future my anxiety keeps insisting will happen. Millennium Actress, anyone? Games, with their many online updates, present a completely different post-apocalyptic preservation ball game. So, while I'm still holding onto many PS3 and PS4 discs, chances are I'd still need an internet connection or at least a whole other blu-ray's worth of downloaded patches to make any of them playable.
