Many technologists have wondered what format of optical disc will inevitably come to replace the current generation of HD and BluRay DVDs. While there has been no shortage of new formats developed and considered, a new design has been gaining attention as a conceivable, and realistic possibility for the future.

Building on Pink Floyd's research into lasers (joke), the new format is called "5D DVD" and on these DVD-sized discs, up to 1.6 TB of data can be stored utilizing 5 dimensions.

When you hear "5 dimensions" some of you might imagine that the DVDs are altering the space-time continuum to store information in nano-pockets of blackholes or something, but the actual reality is a bit easier to comprehend. Using nanometre-scale particles of gold as an inscription medium, data is burnt on to the optical discs using lasers that burn information similiar to a regular DVD process involving the 'regular' three spatial dimensions. With 5D DVD however, the recording process doesn't stop after the 3D is done.  

Because of the "gold nanorods" color -- which is determined by electromagnetic wavelengths -- can also be used as the fourth dimension of information encoding on the 5D DVDs. The '5th D' is polarization: the surface can be altered to adjust the angle that light hits the disc, so this in turn adds a much greater capacity to the DVDs by allowing for information to be stored in all 5 of these ways.

The researchers behind this 5D project hail from Australia's Swinburne University of Technology. They believe the 5D DVD format has potential because the actual discs themselves are similar to contemporary DVDs and can be produced for only about 5 cents each. Silver nanorods might replace the current gold nanorods in use no, further dropping the production costs.

The primary drawback to the 5D DVD method right now is that the writing process takes a long time -- but the researchers seem confident that they can drop the time down somewhat as they develop the process.