Let the hive mind of Engadget get that for you.
"I am looking for a device that will stream sound from one source to several recipients. For example, I want to stream sound from my TV or stereo to my phone or MP3 player that has radio and Bluetooth capabilities. I have looked into radio transmitters and they seem like a decent choice, but I can't find one that uses external power (USB or from the plug) and I would want one with a transmit range of around 50 meters. Thanks!"
I've been through the miserable recent experience of trying to make current generation HP DVD-DL (two layer, not three)disks write reliably - or even be recognized as a valid medium - on 4 different DL recorders without success. I'm not holding my breath regarding the commercial adoptability of these far more difficult to engineer blue laser devices; my experience in the optical disk world since the '80s has been: announce, announce, announce, underdeliver late, require belt and suspenders to provide any degree of data safety, and don't even think about smooth cross-compatibility as a given. The only real exception, and marginally so, was the CD.
I can remember brand new Sony single speed CD-R's fresh out of the package that a new and expensive SCSI HP dual-speed writer couldn't even recognize. This particular lunatic fringe of the industry is overpopulated with marketspeak and suicidal engineers trying vainly to make it work. I know - I had a company in the business for 11 years. Just last night I checked a disk that Roxio said had been burned successfully; no data on it. Optical disk is a "check your backups and worry a lot" technology that is always being eclipsed by magnetics.
Do the math - terabyte magnetics for $400 retail. Now calculate the cost of the same on optical - drives plus media. Get the picture? There's no crossover point! Take the Sony 200 DVD disk changer: add 200 media at $1 each and add it to the $500 for the changer, then add the software. $700+ for 1.7 terabytes of slow, mechanically complex and noisy video or data server that requires a computer to manage and a fork lift to move.
For data, it's worse, because you never get 100% fill on an optical disk; there's always unused space at the end, so the "overhang" reduces the effective capacity. Speed? No comparison - 10 seconds to load, several more to spin up and start, vs. 10 millisecond access on magnetics. Space - I can fit 30 external HDs in the space of a Sony 200 disk changer - power consumption, reliability, speed, convenience, you name it; optical is a poor solution precisely because the vendors never deliver what they spec out, or deliver it so late it's irrelevant.
51 GB tri-layer disks in the pipeline? You better live at the wellhead if you want to see real product in your lifetime.
That's a real purty picture you paint there regarding "magnetics" (I just call them "hard drives", but I don't expect my term to really catch on with the general public).
Of course you're omitting a few things. First of all portabality... sure you can use external "magnetics", but if they are used ultra-portably you dramatically increase the second problem, drive failures. It might take an extra 30 seconds to verify a burned disc, but then as long as you don't throw it around casually you know it'll read, it's built to be portable. On the other hand, with "magnetics" you know it has your data, but once the drive fails you're out of luck (or out of tons of money to hopefully recover the data). Plus you've got the huge differential of data lost between a 4 GB DVD and a 500GB "magnetic" (and as we've seen, as optical discs increase capacity, so will HDDs).
Ultimately neither one is a perfect solution, so I have HDDs with instant access to all my data, but I also have DVD backups in case the HDDs fail. Championing one format while claiming the other is useless is short sighted and foolish. Advances in both technologies, side by side, means better options for the consumer...