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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?
Are they made from copper and tin dics created by the local blacksmith and can also be used as shields if you are attacked by roving brigands?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
The company is New Medium Enterprises. Here is their press release for the VMD.
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.
The prime consideration is that this technology uses current red-laser technology rather than a new blue-laser. This makes it inherently backwards compatible with today's CD-RW and DVDs. It is also cheaper and carries 20 gig on one side, with a 30 gb model available. If we use high-bandwidth XVID/Ogg streams on this, why would we need blu-ray?
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
The redundant department of redundant redundancy called on the telephone....
Because we all know competition is good and the best technology always wins... right?
Really, I currently have 600gb of data archived for photographs and images. That's not a whole hell of alot. 3x200gb Seagates take care of the raiding and assorted 80, 120, 160's (and I Just found another 60 laying around, YES!) handle day to day demands.
/ceramic disks.
So, as with bluray, All I've got to say is "How soon do your writers and media get down to 1/10th the cost of IDE media (currently reasonably at $0.47/gb).
A DVD (cheap) can be had for about 40 cents per disk- which doesn't get you much for archiving except the ability to slap it into a jukebox that makes whirling sounds.
I need a massive data storage solution that I can ship off to friends to keep backups for me that does not rely on moving metal
So, I welcome another format- so long as they MOVE THEIR ASSES and get the price down to what I can afford.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go check Amazon and Outpost to see if they have any more 200gb Seagates for less that $0.47/gb after rebate.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm also very fond of the small 8 cm. discs. They fit in your pocket nicely. With PC equipment getting smaller/more powerful all the time, one of the things holding back small formfactor PC's is the size of optical drives/discs. In the past, the small capacity of 8 cm. discs may have been a good argument for keeping those, but with multiple GB.'s storage on even these small discs, that argument isn't so strong anymore. I would welcome it if some manufacturer had the balls to produce a 8 cm. disc only optical drive (about floppy-drive sized), and build an extra small PC around that. Think Nintendo GameCube style, but PC-compatible.
From the article: "VMD is a high quality format with unparalleled built-in copyright protection .."
And then there's the DRM issue. With DVD, it doesn't actually prevent consumers from copying/converting discs, but what if this changes? I wouldn't be willing to sink ANY money in it if that were the case.
If DRM on next-gen optical discs really does become a barrier for consumers, I might start looking to grey import some equipment/discs using non-DRM including China-developed format.
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--
This sounds exactly the same as D-Data's apparently defunct Digital Multilayer Disc format, which also was a multilayer red laser. The CTO is even a Russan/Israeli, although not Eugene Levich.
My video compression blog
Some of us can notice the quality loss on DivX.
Yeah, sure, I know.
Divx/MPEG-4 at high bit rates is the same "quality"... actually better than MPEG-2 (DVD) in most cases.
Then again it's all about where you play your MPEG-4 movies. Play the same "DVDRip" on a 550 MHz computer, a 2 GHz computer and a stand-alone player. The stand-alone will likely come out on top because it was built to only decode MPEG-1/2/4 and do nothing else.
My player has what they call "upsampling" which sounds like pseudo-science but it actually does make the movies come out better (then they look on the ol' PC).
Then again it's all a matter of correct encoding and so forth. If the movie was encoded badly it will never come out right. Come look through my DVD backups, I dare you to find the flaws.
And when it comes to most video content you'd be suprised about how much stuff you don't see anyways because you aren't looking for it. If you watch the background constantly you are likely to be angered by bad extras or movie mistakes before video flaws.
Anyways to say that you can see the quality loss with Divx makes me laugh because you can even go a whole Mbit/s higher than MPEG-2 (DVD)... it's all about encoding (like mp3 and real audio!).
Get your Unix fortune now!
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.