This holiday season, there is a new player in the HD market from New Medium Enterprises (NME) called HD VMD to compete with HD DVD and the more popular Blu Ray format for High Definition storage & playback.This system has had a strong presence in New Zealand, Iceland and parts of Central Europe for a while, but is now just coming on the American marketplace.
The company is touting itself with the world's first low-cost "True High Definition" solution utilizing today's red laser technology, similar to that of the standard DVD.
HD VMD is a true HD format with 1920 x 1080i/p resolution, up to 40 Mbps bit rate playback, DVD up-scaling so users can watch their existing DVD collection and achieve premium picture quality through their HD TV monitors. The HD VMD player is suitable for playback on all HD-capable display devices and will support existing optical disc formats: CD, DVD (DVD 5 & DVD 9). HD VMD players also feature Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and all region codes for greater film viewing flexibility.
Audio wise, the HD VMD format supports up to 7.1-channel Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, and DTS audio output, though it will not offer Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio surround sound codecs.
The two initial players being release are the ML622S and the ML775S. The ML622S will cost approximately $150.The ML775S will cost slightly more and include USB ports (for connection to external storage devices) and a media-card reader.So far, no major movie companies have signed onto the new format, but are starting to take notice. This will likely open up a whole new segment in the home entertainment market starting in 2008.
Some information courtesy of: New Medium Enterprises
