InPhase Technologies Inc., which was spun off from Bell Laboratories in 2000, is producing the holographic disc -- called the Tapestry HDS-300R. The launch of the product to a limited number of customers next month will be followed by a general product release in the first quarter of 2007 aimed at enterprise-class users.

The new DVD is being demonstrated this week at the International Broadcast Equipment Exhibition in Tokyo. InPhase announced the technology breakthrough in holographic storage earlier this year (").

While InPhase would not disclose pricing at this time, it has been reported that the product will likely retail for US$100 to $125 based on the price of Maxell's current Tapestry disk products.

While the first generation of the 300GB DVD is aimed at commercial use, InPhase expects a consumer-grade product launch over the next two years in what it hopes will be a standardized format.

Lisa Dhar, vice president of media development at Longmont, Colo.-based InPhase, said the product will first be marketed to the entertainment industry for high-speed, high-capacity film recording, and to enterprise-class companies for data archiving operations. The 300GB product will have data transfer rates of about 20MB/sec.