Archive notice: This article was originally published on April 18, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
GFPak is the provisional name of a new storage system based on flash memory storage that Ikegami and Toshiba intend to develop in a strategic partnership. As the two companies announced at NAB, they also intend to develop a tapeless production system around GFPak, consisting of the GFCam camera, the GFStation recorder and the portable GFStation portable recorder. It supports MPEG-2, MFX as well as DVCPRO 50 and 100.
The system is planned as an open standard for SD and HD and is to be ready for the market by NAB 2008. Prices and specifications could already be learned now: The camcorder is to cost 25,000 US dollars, be equipped with three 1/2-inch chips and support HD 1080i/720p. It works with 4:2:2 and the MPEG-2 LONG/I-Frame codec.
The recorder, priced at 45,000 US dollars, has 128 GByte of internal storage. For playback, it is to have an up/down converter. The compact portable recorder is expected to cost around 18,000 US dollars.
Of particular interest with solid-state storage are naturally the storage media and their price: The GFPaks is to be available with 16, 32 and 64 GByte. The 32 GByte GFPak is to cost 950 dollars.
At the Ikegami booth, there was also the prototype of a neww holographic drive for long-term archiving of video files to see – Ikegami promises a service life of 50 years. The HDS-300R was created in collaboration with the US company InFace. The medium is a 130 mm disc that has a 1.5 mm thick recording layer. The laser operates at a wavelength of 405 nm, and currently, according tomanufacturer information, 300 GByte (at a data stream of 160 Mbit/s) can be stored on one disc. The system is to be available from the beginning of 2008. By 2010, Ikegami wants to achieve a capacity of 1.5 TByte per disc.
Further links:
- Ikegami
