GE's new holographic storage burns 500GB discs at the speed of a Blu-ray

Holographic disc storage may not have worked out so well for InPhase, but the folks at General Electric are still trying to make HVD work. Their latest breakthrough, shown off today at an IEEE symposium in Hawaii, is a new micro-holographic material which is 100x more sensitive than its predecessor and ups recording speed to that of Blu-ray discs. In the two years since we saw it last some of the hyperbole has apparently been lost -- no claims of "two to four years left for Blu-ray" this time around -- but manager Peter Lorraine still thinks the DVD-sized discs have a future in archival and consumer systems. That's getting tougher to imagine in a world with FiOS and Netflix streaming, but if there is ever another disc format you may be looking at it right now.