Editing Sony (section)

===Optical storage===
[[File:Sony BD-RE 200GB front side 20080119.jpg|thumb|Front side of a Sony 200GB Blu-ray disc]]
Sony demonstrated an optical digital audio disc in 1977 and soon joined hands with Philips, another major contender for the storage technology, to establish a worldwide standard.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The history of the CD – The beginning – Research |url=https://www.philips.com/a-w/research/technologies/cd/beginning.html |access-date=3 August 2020 |website=Philips |language=en |archive-date=2023-05-06  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230506083717/https://www.philips.com/a-w/about/innovation/research.html |url-status=live }}</ref> In 1983, the two companies jointly announced the [[compact disc|Compact Disc]] (CD). In 1984, Sony launched the [[Discman]] series, an expansion of the Walkman brand to portable CD players. Sony began to improve performance and capacity of the novel format. It launched write-once [[optical disc]]s (WO) and [[Magneto-optical drive|magneto-optical discs]] which were around 125MB size for the specific use of archival data storage, in 1986 and 1988 respectively.<ref>A</ref>

In the early 1990s, two high-density optical storage standards were being developed: one was the MultiMedia Compact Disc (MMCD), backed by Philips and Sony, and the other was the Super Density Disc (SD), supported by [[Toshiba]] and many others. Philips and Sony abandoned their MMCD format and agreed upon Toshiba's SD format with only one modification. The unified disc format was called [[DVD]] and was introduced in 1997.

Sony was one of the leading developers of the [[Blu-ray]] optical disc format, the newest standard for disc-based content delivery. The first Blu-ray players became commercially available in 2006. The format emerged as the standard for HD media over the competing format, Toshiba's [[HD DVD]], after a two-year-long [[high-definition optical disc format war]].

Sony's [[Laser communication in space|laser communication]] devices for [[small satellite]]s rely on the technologies developed for the company's optical disc products.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Sony to launch space business |url=https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Sony-to-launch-space-business |access-date=21 April 2018 |website=Nikkei Asian Review |archive-date=2020-11-15  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201115132837/https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Sony-to-launch-space-business |url-status=live }}</ref>