"Nature" journal reports, that the new technique could squeeze around 140 times the capacity of the best Blu-rays into a standard-sized disk.

Researchers at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia suggested a new "five-dimensional" optical recording method that could be commercialised. 

Traditional DVDs and Blu-ray disks store data in two dimensions, and there's been a recent push to increase their capacity by creating multi-layered disks that store data across three dimensions. The new technology extends it by encoding information in two new dimensions — the wavelength and polarization of the laser light used to write the data.

Their approach used 10-layer stacks composed of thin glass plates as the recording medium. If scaled up to a DVD-sized disk, the team would be able to record 1.6 terabytes - that is, 1,600 gigabytes - or over 300 times the quantity stored on a standard DVD. A Blu-ray, by comparison, can store around 50 gigabytes.

Significant improvements could be made by thinning the spacer layers and using more than two polarisation angles - pushing the limits to 10 terabytes per disc and beyond, the researchers say.

The team say it could have a prototype disk ready within five years.

Still there is an obstacle of commercializing femto-second lasers, used to read and write data with the new method. But so it was with the Blu-ray player some time back.

Now imagine all your Blu-ray movies (or games) collection on just one disk...