Professional Disc

Professional Disc (PFD) is a digital recording optical disc format introduced by Sony in 2003 primarily for XDCAM, its new tapeless camcorder system. It was one of the first optical formats to utilize blue laser, which allowed for higher density of data to be stored on optical media compared to infrared laser technology used in the CD and red laser technology used in the DVD format.

PFD uses a 405 nm wavelength and a numerical aperture (NA) of 0.85 for the laser, allowing 23 GB of data to be stored on one 12 cm disc – the equivalent to nearly five single-layer DVDs, and a 1x speed data transfer rate of 88 Mbit/s for reading and 72 Mbit/s for writing. After the 23GB disc was released, a dual-layer 50 GB was developed and released.

This format is sometimes confused with the Blu-ray Disc format, another optical disc format using blue-violet lasers and supported by Sony. Even the PFD's caddy and Blu-ray's bk prototype caddy (later dropped) looked very similar. Capabilities differ; single-layer PFD discs have a capacity of 23 GB whereas Blu-rays can store 25 GB. However, Blu-ray Discs currently allows a 2x data transfer rate of 72 Mbit/s – lower than PFD. This is because PFD discs use much higher quality media and drives use higher quality components, making them prohibitively expensive for the consumer segment to which Blu-ray is aimed.

The PFD format is used as the recording medium in Sony's XDCAM professional video devices, both for standard definition and high definition applications.

Professional Disc for DATA (PDD or ProDATA) was a general-use recording media variant of PFD, aimed primarily at small and medium-sized enterprise for data archival and backup. PDD drives and media became available in mid-2004. The BW-RS101 external SCSI-3 drive originally retailed in the UK at £2,344 (excl. VAT) directly from Sony, and 23 GB write-once and re-writeable media retailed for £30 each. Two other drives – the BW-F101/A internal SCSI drive and the BW-RU101 external USB 2.0 drive also became available around the same time.

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