In a press release issued today, Sony announced that they now have started shipping BluRay Disc recordable media with capacities of 50GB. While BluRay penetration is very low and the cost of BluRay devices exceedingly high, Sony sees the introduction of these new discs as a step forward:
"The arrival of 50GB Blu-ray Disc media is an important milestone in the evolution of this new format," said Mike Lucas, director of marketing for Sony Electronics' Media and Application Solutions Division. "The capacity represents more than four hours of HD quality video, at a 24 Mbps transfer rate, allowing users to take full advantage of Sony's Blu-ray Disc burners and VAIO desktop and notebook computers."
You can read the full press release below. Maybe with media of this size coming now, within a year or so we'll have affordable "mass-storage" optical media solutions.