> Multi-dimensional RS codes are an easy way to get to an absurdly huge size for real (granted they stop being MDS)

Yeah, that's the traditional way of doing things. CD-ROMs used multi-dimensional RS (the RS(28,24) was just one bit of the inner-code IIRC, which would fit inside another multidimensional RS code).

But since its no longer MDS, the "search space" of non-MDS codes is quite large. So you have the question of "which code has a higher-probability of successfully correcting errors/erasures" ??

LDPC and Turbo codes apparently have better probabilities of fixing errors/erasures, at far lower computational costs. To the point where a fair number of applications seem to prefer Turbo / LDPC codes today over multidimensional codes (built out of RS)