Media and Entertainment Storage Revenue to Grow 1.9X From 2013 to 2018

The ninth annual report from Coughlin Associates on digital storage in media and entertainment, the 2013 Digital Storage for Media and Entertainment Report, provides analysis of the role of digital storage in all aspects of professional media and entertainment. Projections out to 2018 of digital storage demand for content capture, post-production, content distribution and content archiving are provided in 59 tables and 88 figures.  
The report includes results from a 2013 survey of SMPTE, HPA and Digital Production Buzz members on their digital storage needs in these target segments (comparing the results to similar 2009, 2010 and 2012 surveys). These surveys were used to refine the current report analysis from previous editions and track industry trends. The report benefited from input from experts in the industry, which along with economic analysis and industry publications and announcements, was used to create the data including in the report.

Highlights from the report:

• Creation, distribution and conversion of video content creates a huge demand driver for storage device and systems manufacturers.
• As image resolution increases and as stereoscopic (and even more immersive) video becomes more common, storage requirements explode.
• The development of 4K TV and other high resolution venues in the home and in mobile devices will drive the demand for digital content,especially enabled by high HEVC (H.265) compression.
• The slowdown in areal density growth for HDDs will slow the historical $/GB decline until at least 2016.
• Activity to create capture and display devices for 8K X 4K content is occurring with planned implementation in common media systems by the next decade.
• Active archiving will drive increased use of HDD storage for archiving applications, supplementing tape for long term archives.
• Flash memory dominates cameras and will find wider use in content distribution systems
• From 2013 to 2018 entertainment and media digital storage TAM (without archiving and preservation) will increase by about 2.5X to from $2.5 billion to $6.2 billion.
• Between 2013 and 2018 media and entertainment storage revenue growth is expected to grow 1.9X (from $6.2 billion to $11.9 billion).
• In 2013 archiving and preservation is estimated to have been 59% of the total storage revenue followed by post production (20%), content distribution (17%), and content acquisition (4%).
• In 2018 the projected revenue distribution is 48% archiving and preservation, 26% post-production, 23% content distribution, and 3% content acquisition.
• Between 2013 and 2018 we expect about a 5.8 X increase in the required digital storage capacity used in the entertainment industry and about a 3.8 X increase in storage capacity shipped per year (from 36,756PB to 102,661PB).
• The greatest storage capacity demand in 2013 is for digital conversion and preservation as well as archiving of new content (about 98%). Content distribution follows in size with acquisition and post-
• production using less storage.
• By 2018 we expect 61% of archived content to be in near-line storage, up from 43% in 2013.
• In 2013 we estimate that 43.9% of the total storage media capacity shipped for all the digital entertainment content segments was in HDDs with digital tape at 42.3%, 13.6% optical discs and flash at 0.3%
• By 2018 tape has been reduced to 37.1%, HDDs shipped capacity is 60.9%, optical disc capacity is down to about 1.6% and flash capacity percentage is still at 0.3% in 2018.  
• Media revenue is expected to increase about 20% from 2013 to 2018 ($741 million to $892 million).
• The single biggest application (by storage capacity) for digital storage in the next several years as well as one of the most challenging is the digital conversion of film, video tape and other analog formats.
• Over 99EB of digital storage will be used for digital archiving and content conversion and preservation by 2018.
• Content distribution and post-production will drive the growth of network and direct attached/local storage in the projection period.
• Storage in remote clouds is beginning to play an important role in enabling collaborative workflows.
• Digital cinema is experiencing considerable growth, driven by the popularity of 3D contentand the move to 4K display.
• Silver halide film as a content distribution media will vanish before theend of the decade.
• There is a pressing need to develop policies and procedures for format conversion to combat format obsolescence.
• Several petabytes of storage may be required for a complete stereoscopic digital movie production at 4K resolution and there is some production work as high as 8K.
• Non-linear editing requires high performance storage devices. Over the forecast period lower network storage costs and higher performing low cost storage networks will result in faster growth of network storage than direct attached and local.
• ATA HDD arrays are becoming the dominant mode for readily retrievable fixed content storage.
• Magnetic tape will remain as an archival media although use in other applications is in decline, particularly content capture.
• Flash memory appears to be reaching tipping point in professional video cameras with survey results showing about 59% utilization in 2013 (growing from 2009, 2010 and 2012 survey results).
• The continued need to storage for higher performance and high capacity workflows are driving strong storage growth in the projection periods - assuming no great negative economic trends.