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ANOTHER High Definition Disk Format?!?
Aoi
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This came from over at TVShowsondvd.com
CEDIA is the "Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association", and this week (Sept. 5-9) they're holding their annual Expo in Denver. There's a lot of hi-def media talk going on there since it started yesterday, with each side claiming better hardware sales than the other, depending on what point of view they use. We've been deep in the middle of a hi-def home video format war for over a year now, with rivals HD DVD (which launched its first discs on 4/18/2006) and Blu-ray Disc (whose discs debuted on 6/20/2006) going at it tooth-and-nail. Each holds a very small piece of the overall home video pie, with most of the industry pundits agreeing that any recent single best-selling DVD would probably sell more copies in a week or two than all the hi-def discs of both formats which have sold since launch.
It's kind of like comparing hybrid cars vs. all-electric cars, and trying to decide which one's better on it's merits, and also measure which one is selling better. Yeah, they're both newer technology, with obvious benefits over the old technology. And obviously one of them is selling better than the other, and is better-supported than the other among manufacturers and consumers. But neither hybrid car sales nor all-electric car sales hold a candle - or even a spark - compared to good old gas car sales...it's the de facto standard and doesn't look like it's gonna disappear too soon. Right now, Blu-ray and HD DVD is kinda like that: DVD is still embedded as the de facto standard, and the new formats aren't making a significant dent in DVD's market share. At least not yet.
So it's still early enough in the hi-def disc game, thinks New Medium Enterprises ("NME"), to introduce a 3rd contender in the contest. And so they have. Yesterday at the CEDIA show, amidst presentations by Toshiba for HD DVD and by Sony for Blu-ray, NME put on an exhibition of their own. And also issued a press release . The UK-based company announced the USA launch of the HD VMD format.
HD VMD stands for High Definition Versatile Multilayer Disc. NME's specs say that this is a fully-capable hi-def player, with ability to produce up to 1920x1080p video resolution, 7.1 sound channels in both Dolby and DTS formats, a data transfer rate of 45 Mbps (right in between HD DVD's ~36 Mbps rate and Blu-ray's ~54 Mbps rate, and significantly higher than DVD's ~11 Mbps), a video transfer rate to match, HDMI port, USB port, internet connectivity, and capable of playing (and upconverting) DVD discs. Current disc capacities are up to 30GB on a single-sided disc, according to the press release. Players are thinner and lighter than most of the competition, and would be available in a variety of colors that include White, Jet Black, Solid Grey, and Flaming Red.
Cost for the player? At launch in the USA, the price is just $199.99.
Wow. That's the price point that Toshiba has been struggling to get their HD DVD players down to (and reportedly will achieve later this year, although from a manufacturer that big name retailers like Wal-Mart say they have no current plans to carry). But NME plans to start at that price point, and work their way down from there. One reason they do that, though, is because they use the "older technology" red laser, like a DVD does. Blu-ray and HD DVD use a "newer technology" blue laser. NME feels that it won't matter, though, if the video quality is the same hi-def 1080p levels as the other two.
At the announcement yesterday, no studio support in the USA was given by name yet. However, the press release addresses that by saying "HD VMD is currently being embraced by content providers around the globe, offering consumers a broad option of content. From U.S. to India to France to China, content from the world's leading film markets will be available to all. VMD is currently being adopted by content providers and distributors in dozens of regions worldwide, including Australia, Brazil, Central Europe, China, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Japan, the Middle East Russia, Scandinavia, and the United States." Elsewhere on NME's site, it is prominently mentioned several times that films "from Hollywood" will be available on VMD.
And why not? One of the advantages that VMD is supposed to have to the studios is that their discs will be cheaper to produce. They indicate that the manufacturing cost of the physical disc will be around $1 per disc, just a bit more than it is for a DVD. That's about one-half to one-third the cost-per-disc of the blue-laser competitors, meaning that consumers may not only see cheaper hardware; they might also see cheaper films as well.
What does all this mean to a site called "TVShowsOnDVD"? Well, it's another format. So far there are 20 TV-on-BD titles either released or announced, and 14 TV-on-HD DVD titles either released or announced. Could there be TV-on-VMD in our future? Gord and I don't know...but if there is, you can count on us to cover it!
Stay tuned.
The formal press release can be found here.
Okay, this is just kind of dumb. There's no way they're going to be the winner at this point, but does anyone think this has a chance of picking up even a remote market share? Will it confuse and frustrate the average consumer even more about the HD war, or will it never get off the ground enough to be recognized above the point that CED format did back in the LD/VHS/BETA days?
CEDIA is the "Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association", and this week (Sept. 5-9) they're holding their annual Expo in Denver. There's a lot of hi-def media talk going on there since it started yesterday, with each side claiming better hardware sales than the other, depending on what point of view they use. We've been deep in the middle of a hi-def home video format war for over a year now, with rivals HD DVD (which launched its first discs on 4/18/2006) and Blu-ray Disc (whose discs debuted on 6/20/2006) going at it tooth-and-nail. Each holds a very small piece of the overall home video pie, with most of the industry pundits agreeing that any recent single best-selling DVD would probably sell more copies in a week or two than all the hi-def discs of both formats which have sold since launch.
It's kind of like comparing hybrid cars vs. all-electric cars, and trying to decide which one's better on it's merits, and also measure which one is selling better. Yeah, they're both newer technology, with obvious benefits over the old technology. And obviously one of them is selling better than the other, and is better-supported than the other among manufacturers and consumers. But neither hybrid car sales nor all-electric car sales hold a candle - or even a spark - compared to good old gas car sales...it's the de facto standard and doesn't look like it's gonna disappear too soon. Right now, Blu-ray and HD DVD is kinda like that: DVD is still embedded as the de facto standard, and the new formats aren't making a significant dent in DVD's market share. At least not yet.
So it's still early enough in the hi-def disc game, thinks New Medium Enterprises ("NME"), to introduce a 3rd contender in the contest. And so they have. Yesterday at the CEDIA show, amidst presentations by Toshiba for HD DVD and by Sony for Blu-ray, NME put on an exhibition of their own. And also issued a press release . The UK-based company announced the USA launch of the HD VMD format.
HD VMD stands for High Definition Versatile Multilayer Disc. NME's specs say that this is a fully-capable hi-def player, with ability to produce up to 1920x1080p video resolution, 7.1 sound channels in both Dolby and DTS formats, a data transfer rate of 45 Mbps (right in between HD DVD's ~36 Mbps rate and Blu-ray's ~54 Mbps rate, and significantly higher than DVD's ~11 Mbps), a video transfer rate to match, HDMI port, USB port, internet connectivity, and capable of playing (and upconverting) DVD discs. Current disc capacities are up to 30GB on a single-sided disc, according to the press release. Players are thinner and lighter than most of the competition, and would be available in a variety of colors that include White, Jet Black, Solid Grey, and Flaming Red.
Cost for the player? At launch in the USA, the price is just $199.99.
Wow. That's the price point that Toshiba has been struggling to get their HD DVD players down to (and reportedly will achieve later this year, although from a manufacturer that big name retailers like Wal-Mart say they have no current plans to carry). But NME plans to start at that price point, and work their way down from there. One reason they do that, though, is because they use the "older technology" red laser, like a DVD does. Blu-ray and HD DVD use a "newer technology" blue laser. NME feels that it won't matter, though, if the video quality is the same hi-def 1080p levels as the other two.
At the announcement yesterday, no studio support in the USA was given by name yet. However, the press release addresses that by saying "HD VMD is currently being embraced by content providers around the globe, offering consumers a broad option of content. From U.S. to India to France to China, content from the world's leading film markets will be available to all. VMD is currently being adopted by content providers and distributors in dozens of regions worldwide, including Australia, Brazil, Central Europe, China, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Japan, the Middle East Russia, Scandinavia, and the United States." Elsewhere on NME's site, it is prominently mentioned several times that films "from Hollywood" will be available on VMD.
And why not? One of the advantages that VMD is supposed to have to the studios is that their discs will be cheaper to produce. They indicate that the manufacturing cost of the physical disc will be around $1 per disc, just a bit more than it is for a DVD. That's about one-half to one-third the cost-per-disc of the blue-laser competitors, meaning that consumers may not only see cheaper hardware; they might also see cheaper films as well.
What does all this mean to a site called "TVShowsOnDVD"? Well, it's another format. So far there are 20 TV-on-BD titles either released or announced, and 14 TV-on-HD DVD titles either released or announced. Could there be TV-on-VMD in our future? Gord and I don't know...but if there is, you can count on us to cover it!
Stay tuned.
The formal press release can be found here.
Okay, this is just kind of dumb. There's no way they're going to be the winner at this point, but does anyone think this has a chance of picking up even a remote market share? Will it confuse and frustrate the average consumer even more about the HD war, or will it never get off the ground enough to be recognized above the point that CED format did back in the LD/VHS/BETA days?
Aoi on
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If you think about it, it sounds good on paper. We have a war between 2 formats that the general populous doesn't give a shit about. They're too expensive and most people say they can't really tell the difference between them and DVD's, or don't even care. That, and all the movies are divided between formats, screwing everybody.
So, you create a 3rd option. Make it better than HD/Blu-ray and a hell of a lot cheaper. And then get every film distributer on board. Now people see 1 universal format that overs a lot more over DVD, is cheaper (or at least the same price), and no worries on having movie X only available on format Y. This "HD VMD" = DVD while HD/Blu-ray = laserdics, for a generational comparison.
...Of course, any retard can see that's a pipe dream at best and has no shot of actually succeeding in, oh you know, reality. But you just know some suit is thinking the above scenario and licking his chops thinking he's just hit paydirt. Poor git.