The Versatile MultiLayer Disc -- Yet another competitor for Blu-ray and HD-DVD
By Peter Rojas 
posted November 12th 2004 3:00PM
posted November 12th 2004 3:00PM
As if anyone needed yet another high-capacity optical disc format to contend with, a company called New Medium Enterprises has been showing of their new 20GB high-definition Versatile MultiLayer Disc, saying that they'll have drives and up to 30GB VMDs ready by Fall of next year. It's hard to see VMD catching on given the complete lack of support from any major manufacturers or any movie studios (which the Blu-ray and HD-DVD camps are each trying to convince to release high-def movies in their disc format), but the fact that VMD uses a red laser rather than a blue laser does it mean it'd be easier for factories pumping out DVDs and DVD players to switch over. They just probably won't.
Multilevel / layer disc will have reliability
problems. C3D out of business along with several
other well funded programs using this concept.
I wish them good luck in their endeavors.
For the multi-layer concept, they may encounter manufacture yeild rate problem. There should be long way to go.
i have learnt that vmd - versatile multilayer disc has been successfully demonstrated at cebit in 2005. apparently they have tied up with chinese optical disc giant, e-world for commercial production as well as made deals with the indian bollywood and chinese movie content distributors. their website gives a lot of info: www.nmeinc.com
VMD is a Significant technology for future
High Definition Systems...
Versatile Multilayer Disc – VMD, is all set to become the latest video disc standard - the format of choice for high-definition video content, by providing increased storage capacity per disc. In order to play a full length motion picture in HD, the minimum storage requirement lies around 20 GB, whereas the latest DVD9 can only contain 8.5 GB. VMD is the much awaited breakthrough and compelling solution for cost effective High-Definition pre-recorded discs and players.
VMD is precisely the same size and thickness as DVD. While DVD technology utilizes two layers of a disc, VMD technology has conceived multi-layering, whereby the storage capacity is dramatically increased. Each additional layer adds approximately up to 5 GB of memory over a standard DVD disc. VMD provides the ability to place up to 20 layers on a single disc with no quality loss in the content stored. This means capacity to record 100 GB or more.