New HD DVD format threatens

I’ve just picked up a story concerning a new High Definition DVD format in the continuing idiotic next generation DVD format war. It’s claiming that new EVD/VMD hardware and discs will be available by spring next year.

This may well be connected with a story I wrote a while ago about a new format for China. I’m not entirely sure. However the story from HD Beat gives us some interesting information:

LONDON -(Business Wire)- Dec. 29, 2005 New Medium Enterprises (OTCBB: NMEN) and Beijing E-World Technology Company, Ltd., today announced the spring launch of the VMD-EVD-HD player at CeBIT in March 2006. Beijing E-World CTO Mr. Xu Xiang said “The two companies have achieved total compatibility between the EVD -HD player and VMD discs. All parties involved are very satisfied with this prototype and are confident to start commercial production in early spring.”…

…The two companies had launched their VMD-EVD-HD player prototype before Christmas in 2005, and plan to launch the commercial production in the first quarter of 2006.

This format looks like a winner for the Manufacturers and the Consumer, in fact it’s as good as the best competitor for High Definition, Blu-Ray, and in some ways even better. It’s seriously high quality, compatible, cheap for all, and offers amazing storage possibilities.

For some more technical details of why this format looks so appealing, check the rest of the story…

The features of this new system are quite attractive VMD offers:

Uses existing Red laser technology
Multi-layer storage increases capacity
VM Disc capacity 20 > 100 GB
VMD Player hosts all standard formats
Prices comparable to existing products

The reason that this format seems to be able to hold so much is that the other formats (DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray) are double layered whereas VMD has 10 layers on the disc, and although the layer capacities in the newer formats are larger (HD-15Gb, BR-25Gb) with all those layers the total capacity matches the largest of BR at 50Gb per side (HD comes in at 30Gb and DVD at 8.5Gb per side).

It also boasts the highest Data Transfer rate out of them all at 40Mb per second as compared to the new formats at 36Mb per second, as well as a jitter percentage equal to the lowest competitor of BR at 4-5%.

The compatibility is impressive as well with CD, DVD and EVD on the list, and the encoding offered is H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2 & 4.

What’s most attractive for the manufacturers though is that compared to BR and HD this requires minimal changes to the plants (even compared to HD) and costs a mere $0.65 per disc to produce, which is only $0.15 more than the current DVD discs!

What’s more is if they decide to move to the smaller blue lasers from the current red they suggest that they could increase capacity of its currently proposed 50GB maximum possible capacity to 100GB and 200GB!

You can check out the full comparison chart on their own site by selecting the Optical Disc Comparison Chart at the bottom left of the homepage.

Sounds bigger, cheaper and more accessible than the other formats. Could they steal the glory while the others bicker like children?