A 5D DVD is a digital storage medium akin to a DVD being developed by Peter Zijlstra, James Chon and Min Gu at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. In 2009, the developers estimated that the technology could be commercially ready in five to ten years.
Advantages over current discs
5D DVDs use a writing system that uses extremely tiny particles on which data is written, with multiple layers that are read by three different colors of laser (rather than only one, as is the case with DVDs and Blu-ray discs). According to the developers, this could result in discs with a capacity of 10 terabytes, approximately 2000 times the capacity of a standard DVD, compared to Holographic Versatile Disc technology, which has an estimated maximum disc capacity of 6 terabytes. The similarity of disc writing would also make it easier to make 5D DVD players backwards-compatible with existing CD and DVD technology.