General Electronics is working on a new tech that could possibly doom the future of CDs, DVDs and BDs. With the technique of holographic storage, GE has developed a disc that can hold up to 500GB of data at a very low cost. Unlike the optical technology, holographic technology can pack data more densely thus eventually allowing to store more data.

Though the holographic storage is not that cheap, GE’s cheap way to success is the use of microholographic storage that depends on smaller, less complex holograms. Their estimation says it will take less than 10 cents per gigabyte to produce as compared to Blu-ray’s $1 per gigabyte when it was introduced.

If all goes as planned, GE will introduce these discs in 2011 or 2012.

[GRCblog via NYTimes]