I think that blu ray and HD DVD are years away from being affordable (a Sony 25GB blu ray rewritable disc costs $25, not real bad, but still a lot). But, do the new technologies have the same great features (random access, defect mgmt etc) of DVD-RAM for computer data (rather than entertainment data) use?

I suggest a new forum that discusses optical storage technology in general since there seems to be no appropriate place to discuss the high level issues such as technology comparisons and technology usage issues. Obviously relegating it to the "blank media" area is inappropriate.

BD-RE media can be formated in UDF2.5 and Nero 7.2.3.2b supports "verification" (although I don't know how to disable it). Thus I would think it has the same function as DVD-RAM for data use.

How about the following CD Freaks forum?

Optical Storage Technical Discussions
This Forum is only for experienced users. The postings here might go in depth and be very technical and not understandable for normal users. Please only use this forum for in depth technical stuff.

Probably. When I first saw that forum though, I thought it was going to be on the level of the white papers at the blu ray site (very low level engineering details). After reading some posts there, it doesn't seem nearly as intimidating as the warning on the forum.

All in all, while it may be hard to categorize topics about optical technology, I think perhaps more forums (or renamed) are called for to focus posts a bit more. "DVD-RAM" may deserve it's own forum as probably does "Optical Storage in IT" perhaps, in order to reduce the amount of wading through posts to find something specific without having to resort to using search. I'm new here though, so I hardly have analyzed the whole site and many forums. (I'm IT focused and couldn't care less about CE space (for now)).

zevia wrote:

BD-RE media can be formated in UDF2.5 and Nero 7.2.3.2b supports "verification" (although I don't know how to disable it). Thus I would think it has the same function as DVD-RAM for data use.


I'm still wondering though. It seems like there's not enough emphasis on the PC data use, or at least it gets much less press. Verification isn't as much of a concern (since that can be done in software and backup software does exactly that) as is defect mgmt (general data use) and media robustness (if I scratch a backup disk, does the high density of data make that disc a coaster? That would be too delicate. Perhaps there should be cartridges?).

There are cartridges, but nobody wants to use them. DVD-RAM shows that the market demand for safe data storage is very low, next to 0.
Defect management should be there, I believe. The high density... I only know that TDK introduced a special protective layer called Durabis, but I don't really know more about it.