Successors to Technology that's not even AVAILABLE yet.

Ars Technica has a great write up about next-next generation optical storage technology that promises storage capacities that can compete with current HD technology, i.e. hundreds of GB per disk. Of note:

The "new Ricoh optical disc format that stores 200GB and may be on the market by 2008" with the possible negative that the "format uses eight lasers to read data, which means that drives will be expensive."

Even more promising is a roughly DVD-sized, 300GB disc that will go on sale in 2006. The disc uses holographic memory technology, and was developed by Lucent spinoff InPhase Technologies. Hitachi/Maxwell will help manufacture and market the discs, so that means you should be able to get your hands on them. The drive uses a single laser to write the discs, so it might end up being relatively inexpensive."

I'm also interested that the latter solution (especially if it comes to market next year) so far has only hardware manufacturer backing. In the absence of the MPAA et. al., there might be a chance at the market deciding which next format would be good for HD video. Think of it this way, say InPhase's disks work out as advertised. Everyone who has big storage needs (video connoisseurs in the consumer market) will buy one. How long until either someone makes a set top box that can read content from the disks (in which case, whichever media format is big at the time wins, e.g. xvid, divx) or Media Center PC's catch on big? I think John Gilmore's famous words, "the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it" could just as easily be applied to any sort of DRM or content protection that interferes with free use.

Raul