Global HD VMD day
New Medium Enterprises recently invited press and industry representatives to the presentation of their first HD VMD replication line in Eindhoven and presentation of their retail HD VMD  player and discs bundles. So what is HD VMD then?

HD VMD,  the logical format
There is a long history behind the format but I prefer to skip that and have a look what we got right away. Essentially this is a DVD on steroids, offering VC-1 and H.264 video codec, 1080p max. resolution and the same HBR (High Bitrate Audio) formats than HD DVD & Blu-ray. The major difference regarding the logical format is that there is no interactive technology integrated like HDi or BD-J and no internet connection, the video and audio specs are slightly different but more or less the same than the other next-gen formats.
 
HD VMD, the physical format
The concept behind HD VMD is to stick with existing red-laser technology and to improve the layer technology. On demonstration in Eindhoven was a triple replication line, quad layer to be introduced in the following weeks. This gives us 15GB to 20GB of storage, enough for the majority of feature film titles.
 
HD VMD, the players
In opposite to HD DVD & Blu-ray players the good looking HD VMD players are very similar to current DVD players. Manufacturing cost are obviously dramatic lower than for the competing next-gen formats, focusing very much of what consumers need when they want to move up from SD to HD. Integrated in all players is a nice scaler for ordinary DVDs, so backward compatibility is not an issue.
 
HD VMD, the bundles and the market approach
The market approach of New Media Enterprises is indeed very interesting. They have secured distribution deals for most European countries, some Asian countries incl. India and the US. For all territories nice bundles are available with a player and 5 discs of local taste at US$ 199,- or EUR 199,- for Europe. While this is not cheaper than the cheapest HD DVD player option, one should consider that this is not a subsidized product, those are realistic market prices with positioning the disc itself around $18,- to $20,- or for Europe at bit more expensive at EUR 18,- to 20,-. While it is obviously still terrible difficult for HD DVD & Blu-ray to get into the majority of retail stores, NME actually managed to secure distribution deals with a large array of low budget retailers and major mail order merchandisers like Amazon.com. While we still need to wait for real world sales figures to measure market traction, it appears that the acceptance of a “low budget” next-gen format is especially in those countries much better where HD DVD & Blu-ray are considered too expensive anyway, like in Eastern Europe and India.
 
HD VMD, authoring
I haven’t had a chance to look at the authoring by myself, hopefully I will have another report on this in a couple of weeks. What I learned on my extensive chat with Neil Bottrill, SVP Creative Services, is that NME approach is to simplify the whole premastering process by keeping this very close to well known DVD authoring, but simply integrating HD content. This makes life for current DVD authors obviously much easier. Encoding of current titles where done with Sonic Cinevision encoders, offering potentially the same video quality than HD DVD & Blu-ray.
 
Bottom Line
It can’t be ignored that there is a new player in next-gen town, who might actually shake things up more than expected. Will they be successful with their own replication technology? While the investment for replicators are much lower than for Blu-ray, they are higher than for HD DVD and the vast majority of replicator haven’t even done that. But the point is that NME is not even dependent on their own physical format, HD VMD titles can be replicated on ordinary DVD-5/DVD-9 as well. If blue laser technology fails in today’s tough mass market conditions, maybe HD content finds it’s way to the consumer on a red laser disc. After all, depending on source material current video codecs allow up to 100min on a DVD-9 without compromising the picture quality. But then again, if blue laser is for Hollywood niche markets and HD on red laser wins the mass market war, isn’t that exactly what Toshiba’s HD DVD offers anyway? Maybe Toshiba should tell this the productions folks, nobody knows 3X.
 
After years of rumors and speculation, HD VMD is finally here. Physical & logical format, licenses, player and titles, distribution deals, everything is in place and serious people are behind it. If this will be enough has to be seen, on the other hand with the 4 largest Indian film studios on board they got Bollywood convinced and local market might actually be big enough for secure long term survival anyway. Maybe DVD will be the last globally physical media, who knows? At this point, congratulations from me to NME. More infos on HD VMD coming shortly.
 
Contact Information New Media Enterprises
Alexander Bolker-Hagerty
Executive Vice President
Business Development & General Manager, Nordic
alaxander@nmeinc.com