Just as Toshiba exited the DVD format war leaving Sony’s BLU-RAY the undisputed DVD format for the future, Sony might just have to fend off one more rival, in the form of London based New Medium Enterprises’ HD-VMD and the worst part being this technology not being compatible with BLU-RAY. HD-VMD is an acronym for high definition versatile media disc. And now the real punch, the HD-VMD will cost much lesser to produce than a Blu-Ray disc and to top it off, the HD-VMD player can be mass produced to be priced at around $90 which might just be a bit of a problem for the BLU-RAY. The HD-VMD costs less to make simply because it uses a red laser technology which is found on current standard definition DVD players compared to the blue laser the high definition BLU-RAY uses. New medium is mainly targeting consumers in Asia and Latin America who want high definition quality at reasobable prices. Though, New Medium has tied up with amazon to retail the HD-DVD players, talks with Wal-mart still haven’t yet begun. Sony and market analysts don’t give the HD-VMD much of a chance with it’s current economy pricing since they say that the BLU-RAY player’s prices will fall in due course of time.
But, to win the format war or even survive, New Medium needs the endorsement of big ticket Hollywood Studios which it expects to get by Michael Jay Solomon, hollywood’s best known distributor, whom the company has named its chairman. For now, HD-VMd has only 17 movie titles under its fold. Only the coming days will tell how well New Medium Enterprises’ strategy will work and on whether it will be able to annihilate the BLU-RAY, your guess is as good as mine.
Source: ChicagoTribune
Image : NME Inc
