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it's not surprising

Yes indeed.

CC.

It all depends on their sampling procedures.

"80% success rate" may mean that they have to discard 20% of their batches. For instance, if they sample 100 of a batch of 10,000 and 5 of them are bad, maybe they throw out that batch.

On the other hand, maybe they are finding that 2 in 10 are bad.

Even so, I think the failure rate is for initial quality. Longevity is a separate issue, having to do more with the durability of the media, not so much how well it's made. They're also struggling with hard coats for the discs; see here: http://www.manifest-tech.com/media_dvd/hard_coat.h tm

Actually, Holographics Media is likely the generaton after Blu-ray/HD-DVD. The HVD alliance does not even have plans to release HVD-Roms until around 2009. It's also very unlikely they can release the players and the media at an affordable cost within this generation.

http://www.hvd-alliance.org/abouthvd/technology.ht ml

You might also note that companies that are inveting in holographic media are the same as the ones investing in Blu-ray/HD-DVD, including Sony, Toshiba and Matsushita.

http://www.manifest-tech.com/media_dvd/dvd_holo.ht m

Quote from Optoware president (HVD Alliance):

"Sony and some major Japanese electronics companies are studying holographic storage to replace HD-DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. Sony wants to develop next-next generation storage technologies and we can say that our collinear solution is getting very popular," Kageyama said.

http://www.pcworldmalta.com/news/2004/Aug/271.htm

DVD life studies: "DVD Rot" / DVD Longevity and Reliability (9/2003).

According to About.com, it affects only a small % of discs. Of course, like all digital data, replication is essential to keeping eternal life (despite the best efforts of the MPAA to stop you ;) ). More about the overalarming cries of DVD rot from PC Magazine, Manifest Technologies, and Enterprise Networks and Servers.

Your 20 year old VHS tapes should have suffered significant quality loss by now. It doesn't have to be defective to go bad; VHS slowly goes bad on its own.

Longevity of CD-R's has been studied, and a preliminary government study of DVD-CD lifetimes indicates that you should keep multiple copies, check the media for errors annually and create new dups as bit rot occurs. This is also mentioned in this article on archival life for DVD's.

There doesn't seem to be a single method that is known to last 20 years. Of note, optimal storage conditions for optical media is 50-59 degrees F or 10-15C. That's a bit cooler than your average living space and certainly cooler than "human-optimal" office temperatures of around 77F (vs. the 68F "standard" adopted for heating during the first energy crisis).

Perhaps it should be mentioned that this 'outspoken supporter of the digital rights the Slashdot community holds so dear' is also the expert witness for Eolas, who has been awarded $565M for its web plug-in patent, which even Microsoft-loathing /.'ers have trouble stomaching.

He simply would not tell me the selling price was until I'd heard his entire sales pitch. I walked.

Don't you just hate that?
I wondered about how much it cost years ago, and so now I've finally looked it up and found this site http://www.manifest-tech.com/society/magweb.htm mentioning $1,250 for the full 32-volume printed set.

I just had a bit of a google. According to this DVDs have a lifetime of 30-50 years.

A better read though, is this which is an article about who to best go about long term storage on CDRs.

It includes the tip, amongst a load of others, that the top of CDR's is far more fragile and needs to be treated with great care.

I've got a better one then that -- my "American Beauty" DVD died of DVD Ro. Think Warner Brothers is going to replace it? :) I refuse to buy new one out of principle.