We live in a science fiction world . . .

[Uncle Yuan]

The upshot: Terabyte capacity "CDs" are on the horizon! 

[Panther_Gunn]

I thought we still lived in a material world.   

[Reepicheep]

I was under the impression it was a barbie world.

[Gremlin]

I know believe we live in a supremely AWESOME world!

[yell0w_lantern]

Blu Ray is just an attempt to sell the same movies and new players with a different copy guard.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Blu Ray offers a definite upgrade.

This type, though, does not have that much of a practical use IMO.  At least not yet.  One will probably come eventually.

[stumpy]

I wouldn't mind imaging (backing up) my whole hard drive onto a single disk.

[detourne_me]

The only practical usage is that it's a hard copy, which would be useful for storage.
Optical storage tech isn't useful for consumers anymore, the only benefits it has is it's security (which only benefits the producers really)
Flash and Solid State technology will be the tech of the populous. With instant read/write and bluetooth/wireless communication Solid State will easily dominate.  heck, it already does, how many of us use SD cards and micro SD cards in our phones and other mobile devices.