Bridging the Gap in HD DVD Format Wars

October 9th, 2006: In November Australians will be able to view demonstrations of the UK developed 55GB High Definition Versatile Multilayer Disc, while Australia’s PRODISC Systems named as the exclusive agent for the format.

Briatin’s New Medium Enterprises (NME) recently made waves in the industry through the announcement that is has successfully unified the competing Blu Ray and HD-DVD next generation formats, potentially defusing the format war between Sony and Toshiba.

The third player in the high definition (HD) optical disc market, the company last month announced its 55GB High Definition Versatile Multilayer Disc (HDVMD).

The HDVMD has distracted the warring HD DVD giants, Sony and Toshiba by enabling data from three competing DVD formats (Blu-ray, HD DVD and SD DVD) to be stored on a single multilayered disc.. If all goes well in negotiations with content providers, this should allay consumer fears of being caught in the cross-fire between the two heavy-weights.

HDVMD uses standard HD MPEG 2 (1920 x 1080) video encoding techniques combine with 10 separate optical layers and the same red laser frequency employed in standard Standard Definition (SD) DVD and CD players.

Adding insult to injury, this combination enables HDVMD’s optical stacking technology to provide up to 55 GB of capacity compared to Sony’s Blu-ray Disc initially providing 25 GB and Toshiba’s HD DVD 15 GB.

As it uses existing technology, NME says that its HDVMD solution also comes at a fraction of the price of next generation offerings from Sony and Toshiba. A consumer player for HDVMD titles for example, could cost as little as $295.00 while Blu-ray Disc players and HD DVD players can cost in between $800 and $1500.

These savings also flow through to disc production too, with a HDVMD disc costing less than half of a Blu Ray disc according to NME.

At present the disc is only available in Read Only format, however NME claims it does have plans for a recordable version of HDVMD, which from an archiving perspective would offer real value. PRODISC is hoping to have the disc and player technology to market in early 2007.

NME has also confirmed its longer term plans to produce a recordable version of HDVMD, and the possibility of developing a blue laser version of their multilayer technology boosting the disc capacity to over 150 GB.

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