Posted Mon May 15, 2006 at 11:32 AM PDT by
While you're waiting for the price of Blu-ray and HD DVD players to come down, New Medium Enterprises is hoping that you'll drop a Benjamin or two on a Versatile Multilayer Disc (VMD). VMD provides a high def image using Red-ray technology, which compresses more digital information onto a disc than the standard DVD, but less than an HD or Blu-ray disc.
London-based New Medium is partnering with Chinese hardware supplier Beijing E-World to deliver the first VMD-compatible hardware to the US. The first VMD player to hit US markets will be priced at $150 and will be backward compatible with standard DVD content.
While they haven't announced which titles, New Medium is promising 100 VMD releases by September, priced at $25 per disc.
Essentially a third high def format, the proponents of Red-ray technology are hoping to find a foothold in the market with consumers who want high-def playback, but don't want to pay for developing HD and Blu-ray technology. Rather than a shift in format, New Medium conceives of itself as providing the next incremental step in the quality of DVD players.
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