Looking beyond Blu-Ray. Sony and Panasonic have formulated a new standard for professional-use, next-generation optical discs, known as "Archival Disc".

Both Sony and Panasonic aim to launch systems with a recording capacity of 300 GB per disc from summer 2015, onwards. In addition, both companies plan to leverage their respective technologies to further expand the recording capacity per disc to 500 GB and 1 TB.

Designed for long-term digital data storage, the agreement to jointly develop a standard for professional-use next generation optical discs was originally announced on July 29, 2013.

In recent times, demand for archival capabilities has increased significantly in the film industry, as well as in cloud data centres that handle big data, where advances in network services have caused data volumes to soar.

New signal processing technology has been employed to achieve a  higher playback signal quality. The format will also utilise crosstalk cancellation technology to increase storage capacity. This electrically removes crosstalk from the adjacent tracks that increase as the track pitch becomes narrower.