New Medium showed off its optical drive and media, the versatile multiplayer disc (VMD), at the huge CeBIT technology show in Germany last week. VMD combines some of the best attributes of both Sony’s Blu-ray and Toshiba’s HD-DVD.
Like Blu-ray, VMD uses a red-laser infrastructure, meaning VMD drives are identical to the current industry standard and VMD is able to read all previous DVD formats. The only additional equipment needed is a hi-def encoder.
To maximize storage capacity, VMD uses multilayered discs. Most standard DVDs can hold around 5 gigabytes of data. HD-DVD promises 15 GB of storage, and Blu-ray, which also uses multiple layers, holds up to 25 GB. New Medium plans to blow the others away by embedding up to 10 layers on a single disc, which could potentially boost storage capacity to 50 GB.
In fairness, both Blu-ray and HD-DVD also can use a multiple layer approach to increase storage, but VMD has the advantage of doing so more cost effectively.
In fact, VMD boasts affordable production costs in line with those of today’s standard-definition DVDs and related hardware and components. Industry estimates indicate HD-DVD players, for example, will cost anywhere from $500-$1,000, whereas VMD optical drives could cost as little as $150.
It’s not all rosy for New Medium, however. As IDC analyst Josh Martin pointed out after the company’s CeBIT demonstration, there are inherent shortcomings to red-laser technologies, including concerns from content providers over copyright protection.
“Red-laser DVDs do not have robust Digital Rights Management (DRM) that the Hollywood studios, which obviously are the primary driving factor in these formats, demand in a DVD format,” Martin said.
New Medium said it plans to launch the format commercially by the third quarter of this year. Martin said he realizes the company can’t compete dollar-for-dollar with Sony and Toshiba for U.S. market share, so New Medium will instead focus its energies on markets such as China and Eastern Europe.
