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Another Competitor for Blu-ray and HD-DVD
neutron_p writes "New Medium Enterprises unveils the highly anticipated pre-industrial Versatile MultiLayer Discs, the next generation HD Disc & Drive containing 20GB of storage capacity. VMDs use the current Red Laser technology, so it's easier for DVD factories to switch over. The company is set for launching production and sales of 15 GB, 20 GB, 25 GB and 30 GB Discs & Drives by Fall 2005. The drives will be inherently backward compatible with the existing pre-recorded and recordable DVD and CD formats."
I think that the lower overhead because this uses red lazers will be the biggest selling point of the technologly. Since the other alternatives are very radical this seems to be just right. Also since it is adaptable to blu ray at 1 terabyte eventually!!! This stuff looks like it has a much better change of success.
My UID is prime is yours?
Cant they just Fking PICK ONE and stop trying to out-do each other in the 'snazzy name dept', so they can pool research and get a better product at the end of the day?
"The drives will be inherently backward compatible with the existing pre-recorded and recordable DVD and CD formats."
That may give them a slight lead, but since they are poppin up so late and Sony has already pledged for Blu-reay discs in PS3, and Xbox Next will have it too, if they ever want to see this new format get big they will need soem MAJOR luck, which personally, I dont want them to have, as too many formats isn't going to help us, and will probobly help piracy.
Nothing for you to see here, Please move along.
DVDs are good enough for current games/tv and other media.
By the time the next generation of media finally makes it into production we're going to be downloading everything.
Seriously - the way that things are going everything's going to be available via download, and unless you're stuck out in the middle of nowhere your bandwidth will be high enough toget it faster than the time it takes you to walk to the shops and back.
My Journal
Because we all know competition is good and the best technology always wins... right?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've never liked the disc technology, I wish there was a better replacement (durable flash drives, or something like that) or maybe the CDs with an extra plastic cover, kind of like the old floppy disks.
Anyway, spinning disks end up having reading errors, and the reading rate becomes really slow.
The "article" (if you can call it that ... marketing blurb, really) seems like one of those "too good to be true so it probably isn't" things. Time will tell, but odds are if what they're doing is as easy to manufacture as they claim, the other major DVD researchers have probably already thought of it and discarded the idea, and if it is a really complicated affair then the fact that it uses a red laser vs a blue laser probably won't make much difference. I don't know, we'll see, but I'm not holding my breath on this one. Even if they have something, they're up against some pretty tough boys that have a vested interest in seeing their own technology prevail.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I remember when I had an 80Gb HD and I needed to buy about 50 CDs to free my hard drive of all the junk i download everyday. So I decided to buy an DVD-Writer and a new 250Gb HD.
:-( Maybe I should just buy another 250Gb drive...
What happened is that i just moved everything from my old drive to the new one. Nowadays I have about 200Gb of stuff in the hard drive that I have no idea when i'm gonna use. I would need about 50 DVDs to free the space... great progress!
Now, even with this 30gb discs, i would need 7 discs to backup my stuff.
I call BullShit, for the second time today, actually.
--Mike--
Just thought I'd point out that their proof of concept (according the press-release-in-article's-clothing) is a "pre-recorded VMD has four layers on one side for an initial capacity of 20 GB...." One quick reference to recordable says:
"In 2006, the company will start manufacturing cost-effective 50 GB VMD's on Red Laser, for HDTV and Digital Cinema. With minimal changes of its technology, the company can manufacture recordable VMD as well." (my emphasis)
The fact that the recordable version is referred to as a vague possibility, and (more disturbingly) brought up AFTER a reference to what will happen in 2006, all suggests that we won't see burnable versions of this technology for quite a while. Anyone know where the Blue Laser folks are on getting a home writable version out? That, I think, will really impact user adoption.