The last time we heard from
Vmedia, the company was on a quixotic journey to bring Minidisc-like optical video disks to cellphones in India -- and while we haven't heard anything on that front since, the company is back with plans to place its tiny 1GB disks inside netbooks, MIDs, and dedicated USB drives. If this just sounds like SanDisk's futile
SlotMusic initiative with weirder proprietary hardware and no installed base of readers, congratulations, you can identify terrible business models. Vmedia says that it'll succeed because SD and microSD don't offer consumers a standard set of codecs, while you'll always know a Vmedia drive will play video from a Vmedia disc. Sure, maybe, but we'd bet the industry adopts a few standard video codecs for SD and microSD long before we see a mainstream cellphone or netbook with a clunky mechanical optical drive in it. In fact, hell, let's get crazy: we're willing to bet that
UMD will take over as a dominant format before we see a Vmedia drive in a name-brand device. Any takers?
posted February 3rd 2009 9:44PM
Always fun to see companies burning money on a stillborn idea, insisting that it'll take off.
I love the delicious sarcasm of the post. Thank you engadget. I was chuckling the whole time.
Awesome! A new proprietary format. This will guarantee our success!
Only Apple or Microsoft could pull that off .. inventing some stupid "standard" and marketing the hell out of it ..
Beside how cool the discs look I wouldnt want to carry any of them........
Epic stupidity
Does anyone else remember a similar failed format from about 10 years ago? Discs were roughly the size of a quarter & supposed to hold about 500MB? I can't remember the name of it but it was a pretty good idea 8-10 years ago when mp3's were coming into their own, Napster was king & the ipod was still on the drawing board. Man, things have really changed in such a short time. Player & 4 or 5 discs would easily fit in your pocket & you had most of your library. Ah well.