Last December, six firms -- CMC Magnetics Corporation, Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd., Nippon Paint Co., Ltd., Optware, Pulstec Industrial Co., Ltd. and Toagosei Co., Ltd. - formed the HVD Alliance to support the Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD). ECMA International has approved TC44 to discuss standardization HVD. The first TC44 meeting will be held in Tokyo on March 3.
Before you plan on replacing your DVD collection, know this: Optware doesn't expect to have HVD on the market for consumers until 2007 at the earliest, with players selling for under $3,000. You'll get your money's worth, though. The discs will hold between 100GB and up to one terabyte of data on a standard five-inch disc (the same size as a DVD) and support a data rate of up to one gigabit per second.
