Cupertino, Calif. — The Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) and Ecma International announced they have issued an industry standard for optical media archive life testing. The testing will focus on recordable and rewritable DVDs.
Ecma International is a non-profit industry association of technology developers, vendors and users.
This standard is designed to enable the industry to offer reliable archival-grade optical discs to help end users select the media life expectancy best suited to their application requirements. The new standard was approved by the Ecma General Assembly on June 28.
The document has been assigned the number ECMA-379, and may be accessed at the Ecma Web site. The standard will then be transferred to ISO/IEC JTC1 SC23 under an established “fast track procedure,” according to the companies. The earliest anticipated ISO/IEC version is December 2007.
Manufacturers sponsoring and participating in the development of this standard included Fujifilm, Hewlett-Packard, Imation, MAM-A, Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, Ricoh, Sony, Toshiba and Verbatim.
“End users need reliable media for secure, removable, portable storage of their important documents. Industrywide implementation of this standard will greatly assist them in their purchase decisions,” said David Bunzel, president of OSTA.
Since its formation in Sept. 2005, OSTA’s optical disc archival testing (ODAT) committee has consisted of a multi-national group of industry experts sharing this common goal. The ODAT Committee includes members of global manufacturers and representatives of optical storage products, university and government.
