Versatile Multilayer Disc (VMD or HD VMD) was a high-capacity red-laser

optical disc In computing and optical disc recording technologies, an optical disc (OD) is a flat, usually circular disc that encodes binary data (bits) in the form of pits and lands on a special material, often aluminum, on one of its flat surfaces. ...

technology designed by New Medium Enterprises, Inc. VMD was intended to compete with the blue-laser Blu-ray Disc and

HD DVD HD DVD (short for High Definition Digital Versatile Disc) is an obsolete high-density optical disc format for storing data and playback of high-definition video. Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the ...

formats and had an initial capacity of up to 30GB per side. At a physical level, VMD is identical to DVD, but with the possibility of using more layers.

History

The company founded in

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a state in the Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th-most extensive, ...

as Shopoverseas.com on August 2, 1999, changed its name to New Medium Enterprises, Inc. (NME) on July 10, 2000. On April 20, 2001, it became a public company, with shares traded

over-the-counter Over-the-counter (OTC) drugs are medicines sold directly to a consumer without a requirement for a prescription from a healthcare professional, as opposed to prescription drugs, which may be supplied only to consumers possessing a valid prescr ...

with symbol MNEN. On January 13, 2004 it acquired the intellectual property for multi-layer optical disks from MultiDisc Ltd. and TriGM International S.A, and became headquartered in London. On June 14, 2005, Rupert Snow became chairman, and Mahesh Jayanarayan became chief executive officer, replacing interim CEO Irene Kuan. On July 1, 2005, Eugene Levich was appointed chief technical officer of NME. Levich had a long history of developing multi-layer formats, such as the fluorescent multilayer disc of Constellation 3D. In December 2005, NME announced an agreement with Chinese-based company E-World which was developing a similar format called

Enhanced Versatile Disc The enhanced versatile disc (EVD) is an optical-medium-based digital audio/video format, developed by Beijing E-World (a multi-company partnership including SVA, Shinco, Xiaxin, Yuxing, Skyworth, Nintaus, Malata, Changhong, and BBK Electronics), ...

. At CeBIT in March 2006, NME demonstrated a prototype VMD player and announced that it was expecting to launch the format in the third quarter of 2006. NME claimed 100 titles would be available in 2006. At the Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association trade show in September 2007, NME exhibited two players set for release in October 2007. Twenty US titles were available at launch time, including some from

Icon Productions Icon Productions is a production company founded in August 1989 by actor/director Mel Gibson and Australian producing partner Bruce Davey, which, unlike most other independent production companies, funds most of its development and production cos ...

, Paramount Pictures,

Walt Disney Pictures Walt Disney Pictures is an American film production company and subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, which is owned by The Walt Disney Company. The studio is the flagship producer of live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Studios unit ...

New Line Cinema New Line Cinema is an American film production studio owned by Warner Bros. Discovery and is a film label of Warner Bros. It was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye as an independent film distribution company; later becoming a film studio after ...

DreamWorks SKG DreamWorks may refer to: * DreamWorks Pictures, an American film production company of Amblin ** DreamWorks Television, an American television production company and division of the film studio ** DreamWorks Records, an American record label and ...

Lionsgate Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation, doing business as Lionsgate, is a Canadian-American entertainment company. It was formed by Frank Giustra on July 10, 1997, domiciled in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and is currently headquartered ...

and

The Weinstein Company The Weinstein Company (usually credited or abbreviated as TWC) was an American independent film studio, founded in New York City by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in March 2005. TWC was one of the largest mini-major film studios in North America pri ...

. NME also signed a deal with

Bollywood Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, refers to the film industry based in Mumbai, engaged in production of motion pictures in Hindi language. The popular term Bollywood, is a portmanteau of "Bombay" (fo ...

production company ''Eros Group'' who intended to release 50 Bollywood features on the format. The two initial players to be released were the ML622S and the ML777S. The ML777S included

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

ports for connection to external storage devices and a

media card A memory card is an electronic data storage device used for storing digital information, typically using flash memory. These are commonly used in digital portable electronic devices. They allow adding memory to such devices using a card in a so ...

reader. The manufacturers hoped to sell the format as a lower cost alternative to other optical technologies. However, the

Great Recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...

of 2008 struck about this time, and NME struggled to stay in business. On June 13, 2008 Geoffrey Russell, the interim chief executive officer of New Medium Enterprises, Inc., notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission that the company would be terminating the registration of the company, and that NMEN would cease filing reports with the SEC. The date of effect of this action was 90 days after 12 June 2008. In August 2008 in the UK, New Medium Electronics Limited, New Medium Entertainment Limited and New Medium Optics Limited notified

Companies House Companies House is the executive agency of the company registrars of the United Kingdom, falling under the remit of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. All forms of companies (as permitted by the Companies Act) are in ...

of their applications for voluntary striking-off. In October 2008, the technology behind HD-VMD was revived by companies Royal Digital Media, Anthem Digital and DreamStream to produce a new 100GB optical disc. Anthem Digital's chairman Michael Jay Solomon was the former chairman of New Medium Enterprises. As of December 2010, Royal Digital Media, Anthem Digital and DreamStream web sites were no longer available.

Technical specifications

Disc format

The format uses approximately 5 GB per layer,NME - New Medium Enterprises - HD VMD, High Definition Players and Movies
which was similar to standard

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

s. Standard VMDs can use 4 layers, for 20 GB of storage. The rarer 8 and 10 layered discs store 40 GB to 50 GB, respectively.NME fleshes out 40GB HD VMD discs, hardware, still prepping for launch - Engadget
/ref> One manufacturer listed up to 20 layers on a disc being possible in the future. The Blu-ray Disc uses a blue-violet laser, rather than VMD's red laser, which means Blu-ray can store more information per layer. This format has so far only utilized 1 and 2-layered versions. In January 2007,

Toshiba , commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, ...

announced development on a triple layer HD DVD (TL51) that would have had a capacity of 51 GB. Hitachi announced a 4 and 6 layer version of Blu-ray as well, capable of 100 GB and 200 GB respectively. A standard 4-layer VMD stored 20 GB, which was comparable to a 1-layered HD DVD (15 GB) and 1-layer Blu-ray Disc (25 GB).

Content format

The HD VMD format is capable of high-definition video resolutions up to

1080p 1080p (1920×1080 progressively displayed pixels; also known as Full HD or FHD, and BT.709) is a set of HDTV high-definition video modes characterized by 1,920 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 1,080 pixels down the screen ve ...

which is comparable with

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of st ...

and

. Video is encoded in MPEG-2 and

VC-1 SMPTE 421, informally known as VC-1, is a video coding format. Most of it was initially developed as Microsoft's proprietary video format Windows Media Video 9 in 2003. With some enhancements including the development of a new Advanced Profile, ...

formats at a maximum bitrate of 40 Megabits per second. This falls between the maximum bitrates of HD DVD (36 Mbit/s) and Blu-ray (48 Mbit/s). There was the possibility that VMD discs could be encoded with the

H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...

format in the future. The HD VMD format supports up to 7.1-channel Dolby Digital,

Dolby Digital Plus Dolby Digital Plus, also known as Enhanced AC-3 (and commonly abbreviated as DDP, DD+, E-AC-3 or EC-3) is a digital audio compression scheme developed by Dolby Labs for transport and storage of multi-channel digital audio. It is a successor to D ...

, and DTS audio output, though it will not offer

Dolby TrueHD Dolby TrueHD is a lossless, multi-channel audio codec developed by Dolby Laboratories for home video, used principally in Blu-ray Disc and compatible hardware. Dolby TrueHD, along with Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC-3) and Dolby AC-4, is one of the i ...

DTS-HD Master Audio DTS-HD Master Audio (DTS-HD MA; known as DTS++ before 2004) is a multi-channel, lossless audio codec developed by DTS as an extension of the lossy DTS Coherent Acoustics codec (DTS CA; usually itself referred to as just DTS). Rather than being ...

surround sound Surround sound is a technique for enriching the fidelity and depth of sound reproduction by using multiple audio channels from speakers that surround the listener (surround channels). Its first application was in movie theaters. Prior to s ...

codecs.

References

External links