HD VMD Shows Up Late For the Format War

Fishead writes "As the fight heats up between HD DVD and Blu-ray, and as consumers seem to care less and less, a new contender has entered the fray. Next month, New Medium Enterprises will be selling a 1080p player through Amazon and stores such as Radio Shack and Costco for around $150 — half what the cheapest HD DVD player costs, and a quarter the cost of a low-end Blu-ray. The difference this new HD VMD (Versatile Multilayer Disc) format brings is that the discs are created with the same (cheap) red laser as DVDs. From the article: 'HD VMD discs, which hold up to 30GB on a single side, are encoded with a maximum bit rate of 40 megabits per second... between HD DVD's 36 Mpbs and Blu-ray's 48 Mbps. The format uses MPEG-2 and VC1 video formats to encode at 1080p resolution for the time being, and will possibly move to the H.264 format in the future.'"

Re:Yes, but...

[psychicsword]

I didn't know regular DVDs let "a paying customer - the freedom to do what I want with my movies" Isn't circumventing the encryption illegal because of the DMCA?

Re:Poor Sony

[Suicyco]

Umm, the argument holds as much water as it ever did. Pornography has driven new technologies since porn was invented. It wasn't only vhs. It was Super8. It was the cinema. It was PHOTOGRAPHY. Cheap printing. PAINT. Etc.

Porn will drive new content mediums as long as people are into porn. So you have more choices now. So what? The porn industry produces more video content than all other non-porn video content producers put together. Some porn houses release upwards of 10-20 titles a WEEK.

Also, Super8 projectors were the first time you could watch porn in your home. Err, or was that postcards? Playing cards? Plain old photos? Oil paintings? Fucking stone statues?

So your argument holds no water at all. He who produces the content drives the market.

Re:Yes, but...

[BalanceOfJudgement]

I didn't know regular DVDs let "a paying customer - the freedom to do what I want with my movies" Isn't circumventing the encryption illegal because of the DMCA?

You have the RIGHT to format and time shift, but the MEANS to do so is made illegal to you by the DMCA. It's such an artful contradiction written into the law; you'd admire the artistry if it weren't so evil.

Re:I hope it wins!

[click2005]

But should one go for the cheap HD VMD today or support BDs more expensive route (which surely will be cheaper tomorrow)?

It will take much larger numbers to be produced for BD to even get close to HDDVD/HDVMD in manufacturing cost. HDDVD/VMDs can be produced using existing equipment with small modifications. Manufacturing BD requires new equipment and is a much more complex process.
BD Players also cost about 10 times as much to manufacture as a HDVMD player does.

There is also the issue of media longevity. The recording surface in a BD disc is very close to the underside of the disc. This will increase the likelihood that scratches will cause errors and also increase the chances of warping. The HD format discs are manufactured the same way as DVD and are much more resistant to scratches & warping.

The only advantage that BD really has over HDDVD is the amount of data storage. Dont forget that both BD & HDDVD are still only generally using 1 or 2 layers. HDVMD uses 4 layers to reach 20Gb.

Targetting Bollywood might be a winner

[Michael Woodhams]

Coming late to the game, they need to establish a 'home ground', a niche that they can dominate and then grow out from. India could be that home ground.

A fine feature would be if it were possible to play the new HD VMD disks at DVD resolution on standard DVD players. Given they use the same lasers, it might be that DVD players will see one particular layer, on which the DVD data could be stored. This again would help greatly to break into the market.

However, they don't mention such a feature, and I'd hope they'd have thought about it, so probably it is technically infeasible.

Re:Waste of time

[Divebus]

One thing to keep in mind about Microsoft's success at "requiring" the VC-1 codec was that neither HD-DVD nor Blu-ray had a VC-1 requirement at first. That was a long, painful battle for Microsoft which was typically used to dictating standards to everyone. Ultimately, Microsoft skillfully played the game of leverage between competitors to shoehorn themselves into both disk standards. With the future of digital media unfolding in the early 2000's, Microsoft simply offered High Definition equipment manufacturers and movie studios the whole Windows Media system [for a fee] expecting a quick surrender to the obvious victor of any technical battle - themselves. Microsoft envisioned their Windows Media player as the basis of all future television with themselves in control, dispatching all their competitors to oblivion and erecting a global toll booth between media creation companies and viewers. However, manufacturers tend to avoid these traps and SMPTE wouldn't touch Windows Media with a 10 foot pole for exactly that reason, recognizing that the Windows Media Player wrapper was fairly treacherous ground under Microsoft's control. Microsoft was informed by SMPTE that the codec inside Windows Media could be accepted if it was split out and properly standardized like all the other codecs. Leave the "player" wrapper with undocumented controls out of it. Although the DRM offered by Microsoft was attractive to Hollywood, it became clear that manufacturers would not simply hand their future technical path over to Microsoft, nor would the Hollywood production studios hand over control of their assets to an organization with a history of modifying the terms of an agreement to benefit themselves. Manufacturers and content creators knew that Microsoft could suddenly replace VC-1 with VC-2 and demand a ransom to stay in business. Windows Media 10 was on the horizon and everyone knew what that meant. Microsoft wasn't trustworthy in either of those circles and proper SMPTE standardization was the only road to considering any products from Redmond. Microsoft finally did separate the codec from the Windows Media player and offer it for ratification expecting a rubber stamp approval by SMPTE while refusing to release the source code, refusing to define the royalty conditions in advance, promising to deliver finished codecs while retaining control of the current and future source (and a few other tricks). This all prevented ratification by SMPTE. It was Microsoft's first foray into the workings of a real standards body and they thought they could simply bully their way through it. They weren't used to anyone standing up to them like this. Microsoft was very much out in the cold and basically entered panic mode as they watched other formats develop, deploy and gain momentum. Manufacturers were not going to commit to a proprietary codec which would later hold them hostage. No SMPTE standardization? No use for VC-1. Period. End of codec. End of Microsoft's influence on media. PANIC! As Microsoft was slowly releasing control of VC-1 and approaching SMPTE compliance, Microsoft released premature press releases claiming SMPTE ratification months before they were in actual compliance. SMPTE had to smack them down at least once for this tactic. Finally, Microsoft did what was needed for SMPTE ratification and gained acceptance by the HD-DVD camp [support and funding had something to do with this, I'm sure]. I don't personally know the back story of HD-DVD very well but VC-1 incorporation into Blu-ray had everything to do with the greed of MPEG LA [mpegla.org]. More on that later. I can say that the buzz at the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) [nab.org] show floor was that HD-DVD was a Microsoft backed entity which didn't do it any favors. The NAB members are typically only interested in repeatable standards. Looking around the 2006 NAB show floor, the only people using Microsoft video standards were their direct "partners" in a confined area. Everyone else was using AVC/H.264. Meanwhile

I'm still betting Blu-Ray

[DumbSwede]

As someone that just purchased a PS3 for $350 (after $150 rebate) with free shipping and 8 free movies I'm not too worried about this development. In fact I rather welcome it as HD-DVD and VDM will battle to the death for the low end and most likely neither will survive.

If worst comes to worse I still have a great game machine and a Linux computer.

I must confess one bit of annoyance with Toshiba and the HD-DVD camp; I bought my PS3 primarily as an HD movie player, but the HD-DVD camp screams day and night that only standalone players count (except when they want to include the XBox 360 addon). Blu-Ray may not win, but it certainly has the largest installed base at 6 million plus; it is much less likely to just stumble and fail completely as HD-DVD was in danger of doing until the Paramount defection (strange doings that).

It will be a delicious irony to hear HD-DVD proponents now claiming low-price is not the biggest determining factor in who wins.

I'm unconvinced

[solar_blitz]

As far as I'm concerned, this new DVD format is nothing but vaporware until it's actually released. And even then, it could still go the way of the DIVX format. It seems like the Phantom of DVD players to me: cheap, using off-the-shelf technology, but able to do tons of really neat stuff. Remember, folks, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Re:I hope it wins!

[Anonymous Coward]

Four layers? Cheap to manufacture? Are you on crack?

Sure, the players might be relatively cheap to manufacture. But the big studios avoid pressing even two layer discs whenever possible, because the manufacturing cost of creating two layers, gluing them together with a semi-transparent layer in the middle, and throwing out the rejects is still a lot higher than a single layer, where you stamp it out, cover it with silver, and glue a non-critical bit of plastic to bring it up to 12mm.

Crank that up to 4+ layers, and we're talking about a pretty insane manufacturing process here. And you'll likely never get that sort of density in recordable technology--recordable dual layer discs today still carry a hefty premium over single layer discs, because now you need to add a recordable layer that you can also shoot the same recording laser through to record the other layer. You can't even get re-recordable dual layer DVDs; the technology simply does not commercially exist.

Blu-ray is the best hope for future computer interchange needs, because the 25 GB single layer recordable and re-recordable discs are going to be dirt cheap compared to anything else. It'd be awfully nice if it turned out to be the HD video disc format as well, since it'd mean fewer components. While I'm sure plenty of people would just argue for dual format players, long term I think that's a horrible solution. :-(

And no, HD-DVDs are not necessarily superior to Blu-ray in terms of durability. The hard coating process on BD has done a lot to address any scratching issues (HD-DVD could also benefit from hard coating, of course, but it's not mandatory, and thus usually skipped--making HD-DVD actually more susceptible to scratching issues), and keeping the data layer closer to the surface actually has a lot of positive benefits in terms of readability, improving robustness. In fact, it's the main reason Blu-ray can achieve higher densities than HD-DVD to begin with. Keep in mind that with a relatively thick disc, any warping in the transparent medium is going to affect the ability of the laser pickup to track, especially at the laser frequencies used by HD-DVD and Blu-ray. With a thin optical layer, it almost doesn't matter.

Re:I hope it wins!

[evilviper]

The recording surface in a BD disc is very close to the underside of the disc. This will increase the likelihood that scratches will cause errors

Which is why the BD standard absolutely mandates scratch-proof coatings on the surface of the discs, instantly making them the most durable (bare) disc format anyone has ever seen. HD-DVD, OTOH, is the most dense disc format, and without such a scratch resistant layer, the most easily susceptible to damage anyone has seen.