Digital Home Thoughts: 2000 Movies on a Single DVD? You Betcha'!

"Last month, GE revealed that its research scientists had discovered a way, using holographic technology, to store 100 DVDs worth of information on a single standard DVD. What a difference a few weeks make. In what can only be seen as a "serving" (or pwning) of the GE researchers, the B-Boys researchers at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, have gone way past 100 and on to 2,000. While standard DVDs are made with three spatial dimensions, the Aussie researchers added two more. Using nanoparticles--extremely small bits of matter--the Swinburne team was able to introduce a spectral (or color) dimension and a polarization dimension."

Let's get this right out of the way first: the researches are talking about a 5-10 year timeline on when the methodology for imprinting these discs would be commercially available. It's fascinating technology, to be sure, but as they point out in the article, even if you could fit every James Bond movie onto a single disc, how many people would be willing to pay the $300+ it would likely sell for? Still, business models aside, this is yet another example of how nanotechnology is going to shape our world over the next decade.