HD VMD Shipping in U.S. - Affordable HD Disc Solution Available to Consumers

[Shane]

New Medium Enterprises (NME) (BULLETIN BOARD: NMEN) today at International CES 2008 announced HD VMD players are shipping into the U.S. market. HD VMD is delivering maximum-HD 1080p high-quality players to consumers for a groundbreaking MSRP of $199 via PCRush.com and NMEStore.com. All orders for HD VMD players in January will come with two complementary titles, "Mother Ghost" starring James Franco and cult hit "Cutting Room."

Shipping since December, HD VMD discs and players stand to revolutionize the high-definition disc market, providing consumers with...

[url=http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/news/2008/01/hd_vmd_shipping_in_us_-_affordable_hd_disc_solution_available_to_consumers.php]Read the Full Article[/url]

[shanny1999]

Does red laser versus blue laser mean they have come up with a way to manufacture Hi Def disc players using existing SD technology, thereby lowering costs? What does VMD stand for?

[stevekaden]

I'm going to guess VMD is Video Multilayer Disc but in the times I read about this there was never a definition.

They appear to be double layering existing technology, so it is cheap. But similar to the similarly less expensive technology of HD DVD (albeit with blue laser), it all comes down to the studios and what they release in.

Judging from what was said and not said about content, and what I have heard in the past - Bollywood - I will guess this is not going very far at least here in the US. $199 list is not so competitive - and unless they have a big pile of money for marketing. A Big Sony sized pile....

So I think in terms of - okay neat. NEXT!

[mmayer54]

Cutting Room & Mother Ghost???? You gotta be kidding. If 1 million HD DVD players have already been sold (as low as $99-199 in Nov-Dec), has around 400 movie titles and is STILL sstruggling to compete with Blu-Ray, then VMD can't even have a chance. What MAJOR studios would actually support it ? Anyone buying one of these machines will have an over-priced up-converting player for SD title with almost NO MAJOR HD titles for it!

[jcook01]

Red laser based technology, multilayer, 30GB storage, sounds like HDDUD has changed their name to protect the innocent and is trying a different marketing stategy, B-Titles Rus.

[stevekaden]

Did I miss something. I was under the belief that HD DVD was also a Blue laser technology?

I will once again assume, that HD VMD has obtained the same capacity as a blue laser system (4 x dot density I think), by some radical compression system. Either in the Software or the data encoding (like maybe they dropped the data protection encoding).

[ronatkinson]

As one who has seen the technology, VMD is probably the best of the three formats, but they simply don't have enough or good enough titles to be viable. Even the 300-400 titles on Bluray and HD DVD are paltry, but NME/VMD simply isn't in a position to be competitive, especially not in the US.

[Richard]

I was under the belief that HD DVD was also a Blue laser technology?

It is, but a larger wavelength hence less data storage.

[Shane]

It is, but a larger wavelength hence less data storage.

Actually, Blu-ray and HD DVD both use the same wavelength light: 405nm. Blu-ray achieves more storage due to the fact that the optics are closer to the media layer. With HD DVD, there is .6mm of "plastic" between the outer surface of the disc and the media layer. With Blu-ray, it's only .1mm.

- Shane

[stevekaden]

I found the below link:

http://www.nmeinc.com/russian/images/VM ... nopsis.pdf

And it has a lot information. VMD is Versital Multilayer Disc and it uses multiple layers of an essentially standard DVD. 4.7gb per layer, with a theoretical maximum of 10 layers per side. That's some tight data!

If HD DVD needed to lose so that the market progression for DVD in general could continue and in a standard way to HD, this will certainly need to be at least ignored my most of the studios and market.

It may be that it really can't provide the other features of Blu-Ray (and HD DVD) due to limitiations of being a standard DVD, but they are claiming a bit rate of 40mbs. I have no idea how it can be similar to DVD with the same dot pitch yet get that bit rate other than spinning the disc much faster. That is not stated in the above referenced document. If true, it might be a bit noisier and more suseptable to wear and tear. Or that could be compensated for.

I did not notice a spec for menu operations, internet connectivity etc.