In fact, there is more emerging in the optical space that just those two formats, as I was reminded during a conversation with Rich D'Ambrise, director of technical marketing at Hitachi-Maxell.

If the name Maxell rings a bell, it's probably because it's printed on some of your media, be it CD, DVD, or any tape format. "We are also a technology company," D'Ambrise adds. "We pump back anywhere from 5 to 10 percent of our operating profit into R&D."

Maxell should start shipping BD-R and BD-RW media in Q3 or Q4 of this year, but the company is looking ahead also at some interesting applications of holographic storage. Long-term archiving is one of the first applications expected to exploit the capacity and speed of holographic storage, D'Ambrise explains. A first generation of holographic products (http://www.tvtechnology.com/features/news/2006.06.14-n_InPhase.shtml) from InPhase Technologies will work with Maxell Tapestry 300GB WORM media.

That's good news for archiving because data stored on Tapestry should have a minimum archival life of 50 years. "Our company tends to be conservative with those estimates," D'Ambrise notes.

There is more brewing in the fascinating world of optical storage, but I'll save that for another column. Until then, give some thought to that HD-capable, home-built DVR project -- maybe we can compare notes.