"The DVD stands out as one of the most rapidly adopted consumer technologies ever, but in the electronics industry it's akin to an aging king in Shakespearean drama - rivals are lurking, knives drawn."

Two points:

It's a consumer technology, so the only significant consideration is how those who are able to "drive" it can maximize their profit.

It was the most rapidly adopted because the producers simply quit making/distributing the alternatives. (Can you pronounce "monopoly?")

This will go wherever "they" decide they want it to go, and there's little that we small folk will be able to do about it.

As a "data storage medium," and ignoring all the movies and audio and such, existing DVDs are, IMHO, "not useful." You can put a lot of stuff on one, but retrieval is slow and uncertain. You can't put a label on one, and the "hub" where you can mark them isn't even "marker friendly." They're so prone to physical damage (a water spot can make the entire disk unreadable) that putting data on one is like printing something and then running the print through a shredder to "make it more compact." Sure, you can keep it - but...

Bottom line: I don't think the current DVD technology is stable enough to be too useful except as a marketing/distribution medium for "entertainment." I can't see the "new" DVD format(s) being any different - within the next several years. But they will extract $ M $ O $ N $ E $ Y $ from the "consumers."

John