NEWS
Hitachi has announced the development of a disc based on DVD technology that can store up to 400 hours of data, or the equivalent of 200 films. As opposed to conventional DVD discs which are limited to only two layers, this new disc allows for many more layers to be stacked together, doubling the storage capacity with every two layers added.

Although this technology is still in the early stages of development, Hitachi is keen to market it. The project is a joint venture between Hitachi and its audio/video storage arm, Hitachi Maxwell. The companies hope to have the new tech commercially available by 2007.

Low cost Home Theater servers anyone?

Just think... The complete works of Roger Corman on one disc....

Or a whole music library on 1 disc. I'd better sell my CD changer before this thing hits the market.

Not to be outdone, Matsushita (Panasonic) and Ricoh announced 300 DVD storage capacity on a single disc:

http://bizns.nikkeibp.co.jp/cgi-bin/asia/frame-asia.pl?NSH_KIJIID=223668&NSH_CHTML=asiabiztech.html

Thay did it half a year ago, by the way.

Some explanation on Hitachi disc is here:

http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/wcs/leaf?CID=onair/asabt/news/248431

Having read this, I feel sceptical they can achieve 200 DVD capacity. Will see...