I am not a certified expert on this, just a normal user like anyone else.
But my advice to you frankly: relax.

Now, by no means am I saying to be cavalier about the whole thing. In my
case, I am blessed with a huge 160 gigabyte hard drive which enables me to
store every last photo EVER taken on it, but of course I backup
periodically. CDs for fine for me when all I had a 2 MP point & shoot, now
that I have a D-SLR and a prosumer 5MP--both shoot RAW, and RAW files are
large--I use DVD+Rs. I typically use Memorex or TDK or Philips, as opposed
to whatever off-brand Office Max has for a low price after rebate.

With CDs, I have used the cheap off-brands lately, but if you want to be
extra cautious maybe use those for non-archival things (making an audio CD
of MP3s which you have backed up) and use TDK, Fuji, Kodak, Sony etc brands
of CD-R for the crucial things.

As for format compatibility--I could be totally naive to say this, but
frankly I don't see JPEG going anywhere anytime soon. The only real format
compatibility issues I saw are for RAW files, which are exclusive to the
brand--and even that is somewhat mitigated by Photoshop's growing tendencies
towards reading RAW files and being able to convert them to JPEG. Getting
back to JPEG--people said much the same thing about MP3s becoming obselete
with iTunes using its own propreitary format, and WMA, and AAC files, et
al--but last time I checked, MP3 was still THE dominant format for
downloaded music. Heck, they even make software (if I'm not mistaken) to
convert the iTunes files back to MP3 format. I've seen software which I can
use to convert WMA files to MP3.

Meanwhile, I mean, look at the newest versions of Word & WordPerfect--they
have converters to convert anyfile from old formats to the new. But if you
keep it simple, you can play it safe--that's why many such files are saved
as TXT files rather than DOC or WPD files, because almost any program can
read them. But anyway, I've seen how Word files can take really old files
from previous formats and bring them in cleanly. You may lose some
bold-facing and italicizing etc, but it can be cleaned up often-times--and
again, if you save in a simple format (and I'd think that equivalent to
shooting JPEG in the digital imaging world), you can often-times import
totally cleanly.

I am not saying be cavalier about the whole thing--by all means, backup
often, and consider a fire-proof safe to store the most "archival" intended
CDs and DVDs in. Label them very well so you know what's on them--and every
now & then, load them up to ensure that they work, and then while you're at
it make a copy of THAT CD/DVD--and label it as such (so you don't get them
mixed up), with the date you backed it up. Have the software verify the
files after burning to ensure the CD burned fine.

LRH