As much as some would like to envision a world entirely bereft of disk-based media, with Blu-ray being the medium's swan song, that ain't happening. Sony's already looking to the future, and in cahoots with Tohoku University, it has developed a blue-violet laser capable of 100 watt output. That's reportedly more than 100 times the "world's highest output values for conventional blue-violet pulse semiconductor lasers." In the press release, the company said its tested using such technology for next-generation, large-capacity optical disc-storage, and while that doesn't say too much at face value, the Examiner reports (by way of various Japanese news outlets) that it equates to 20 times the storage of current Blu-ray disks,or about 1TB of data. Don't worry, we're sure all those 4K 3D films will still find a way to justify a "barebones" release dearth of features before magically making room for ... Read more »