Ecma International released two new standards for Holographic Information Storage, a technology that break through the density limits of conventional optical storage by recording through the full depth of the media instead of recording only on the surface.

The new standards approved on May 2, 2007 and published on June 11, 2007 are:

ECMA-377 "Information Interchange on Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) Recordable Cartridges ? Capacity: 200 Gbytes per Cartridge" and

ECMA-378 "Information Interchange on Read-Only Memory Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD-ROM) ? Capacity: 100 Gbytes per disk".

According to the standards one HVD can store upwards of 200 gigabytes of data, the equivalent of more than 40 of today?s DVDs. It is expected that future implementations will be able to store more than 1.3 terabytes. Additionally, unlike optical discs, which record one data bit at a time, HVDs allow over 10 kilobits of data to be written and read in parallel with a single flash of light ? and the recording and reading processes do not require spinning media. Data transfer rates of up to 20 megabytes per second (far faster than DVDs) are easily achieved with rotating or translating media.

Werner Glinka, Chairman of Ecma TC44 said: "With the publication of three HVD standards, TC44 has set a new baseline for the next generation of ultra-high density and ultra-high speed removable storage media. These standards will enable the development of the next-generation of removable storage solutions for the enterprise storage market and the AV/IT professional electronic media storage markets such as film and broadcast content."