I can't even imagine the implications for backup applications for these things. Once the technology is fully implemented & supported, could it be the end of the tape drive? Prolly not.

"Where existing schemes have patterns of pits that reflect the laser as a series of ones and zeros, MODS can encode and detect more than 300 variations per pit. After error correction and encoding, this leads to 10 times the data density of Blu-ray Disc, currently the record holder for consumer optical storage."