HBase supports a "bytes-in/bytes-out" interface via Put and Result, so anything that can be converted to an array of bytes can be stored as a value. Input could be strings, numbers, complex objects, or even images as long as they can rendered as bytes.

There are practical limits to the size of values (e.g., storing 10-50MB objects in HBase would probably be too much to ask); search the mailling list for conversations on this topic. All rows in HBase conform to the Chapter 5, Data Model, and that includes versioning. Take that into consideration when making your design, as well as block size for the ColumnFamily.