Digitally recorded information is an essential element of information technologies.

SC 23 is responsible for over 130 published international standards in the field of digital storage media, utilizing optical, holographic and magnetic recording technologies, and flash memory technologies for digital information interchange.

SC 23 work covers areas, such as:

  • Physical format CD (ISO/IEC 10149)
  • Physical format DVD (e.g. ISO/IEC 16448)
  • Physical format Blue-ray disk (BD) (ISO/IEC 30190 to 30193)
  • Volume and file format of optical disk
  • Cartridge specification of removable Hard Disk (iVDR)

The latest writable BD standards offer the feature to record 4k/8k broadcasted programs.

SC 23 has developed the methods for determining the life expectancy (ISO/IEC 16963) and error monitoring (ISO/IEC 29121) of optical disks for long-term preservation to expand data archive applications. Those standards offer important guidelines for choosing appropriate optical disks as off-line storage media for increasing data-archiving demand, and to prepare for data explosion for the near future.

As artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing services and the Internet of Things (IoT) evolve, it is predicted that 175 zettabytes (ZB) of data will be created, captured, copied, and consumed in the world by 2025.

Not all useful data will be available online, instantly and forever. A realistic energy-consumption forecast will only be achievable if significant volumes of data are moved to off-line “cold” storage. To resolve such potential issues, further innovation and standardization activities will be important and worthwhile in terms of more capacity, efficient space-factor and ultra-low power consumption.

In preparation for such circumstances, SC 23 is looking into potential standards to contribute towards achieving sustainable and realistic energy-consumption growth.

Forecast of digital data growth

Benefits

  • Excellent in-home audio and video experience of keeping them as “physical collections”
  • Longer lifetime and higher quality of digital data preservation for long-term
  • Providing data security with a write-once feature
  • Preserving important data from disaster damage through water-proof function
  • Enabling creation of big data-archiving system under ultra-low power consumption

Users

The general public is the end-user of AV contents distribution.

All types of organizations must preserve important digital data, from the smallest to the largest: National library, Public Record Office, National Museum, data centers, etc. Additionally, the general public can benefit from SC 23 standards.