SCIENCE

The recently released third annual report on data storage and the entertainment market (the 2005 Entertainment Content Creation and Digital Storage Report) shows strong growth in digital storage demand driven by higher resolution content creation and distribution as well as archiving and digital preservation. The report analyzes requirements and trends in worldwide data storage for entertainment content acquisition; editing; archiving and digital preservation; as well as digital cinema, broadcast, satellite, cable, and VOD distribution. Capacity and performance trends are presented and media projections are made for each of the various market segments. Some of the trends presented in this report are: -- Between 2004 and 2010 we expect a 900-fold increase in the required digital storage capacity shipments per year. -- Up to 1,600 Terabytes may be required for a complete digital movie production at 4K resolution. -- Hard disk drives for "archival" applications will begin to gain some momentum. -- Digital cameras using optical media, flash memory, and hard disk drives will gain momentum over traditional video tape. -- 90% of the total capacity will be used for content archiving in 2004. We believe that this will decline to 49% of total capacity in 2010. -- In 2004 we estimate that 60% of the total storage media shipped for all the digital entertainment content segments was tape with 40% optical, 0.43% hard disk drives and a very small amount was flash memory. -- By 2010 tape media units should decrease to 40%, optical increase to 55% and hard disk drives increase to 4%. These trends towards greater digital storage capacity demand to support digital preservation and the creation of higher resolution content will play a significant factor in the growth of digital storage overall and make available the high-resolution content required for continued growth in consumer electronics as well. A listing of the report table of contents, as well as a list of figures and tables and the executive summary, is available in the technical reports section of the Coughlin Associates website, www.tomcoughlin.com. Copies of the report in PDF format can also be ordered from the website.