Take a walk through museums throughout the world and it is plain that preserving aspects of human life is of great importance for us and our future generations now observe how much of human culture is represented through video, almost anything and everything from entertainment to education. Discs may be the last physical form of data storage, so it is appropriate that the creators of the VHS also develop the archival DVD. JVC Advanced Media tested DVD-Rs with the ISO/IEC 10995, which doesnt exactly toss the disc to the dog, but does implement up to 77 degrees with 50 percent relative humidity.
Of the discs tested, at least 95 percent passed the aging equivalent of 30 years. In addition to the aging test the DVD-Rs are inspected for quality control with 10 times the frequency. Efforts were focused on scrutinizing tests and being sure that DVDs become more than a consumer archival medium. Other mediums such as tape will not provide the same security and any electronic medium confines video to information stored on a hard drive.
The discs should be similar to those already found on the market and may be printed directly on the surface and written at speeds of 1-16x. The testing is the same for both DVD-R and DVD+R but JVC Advanced Media did not announce test results for an archival grade DVD+R. A logical step is to move forward to a higher capacity disc, since 4.7GB will fill up quickly and require much more space than a disc that is capable of five times the capacity. Otherwise, video is increasingly being viewed from downloads with no physical copy being inserted to a player.
The process for DVD authoring remains essentially the same and is already coming from an internationally recognized optical disc manufacturer, so implementation should be easy to digest. Primarily designed for businesses or governmental long term archiving, these discs will carry much more sensitive information and hopefully be really, really scratch-proof.
