What seems to be the first real optical archival digital tech is now shipping. The Millenniata product is a type of DVD storage that uses a mechanical scratching process, instead of a thermal process, making the media vastly more stable. The disks are in the current DVD standard and the company claims they are therefore backwards compatable to normal players. To write your own disk however you will need the $1700 writer and one of the special blank disks that range from $16-$25ea depending on qty.
If the companies claims on life-span of the media are true this is a major milestone in commodity level archival media. I do think however that they really need some sort of marking on the tops of all the blank media that explains what the DVD data stadard is and how to read it. Otherwise in a 100 years, I cant imagine that many people will remember…
