That’s right folks, because HD-DVD and Blu-Ray weren’t enough for…wait a minute…this post is sounding familiar…but no, I’m not making this up, and it isn’t a joke…there is ANOTHER entrant into the HD disk market: HD VMD.

So what is HD VMD? Well, here’s an excerpt from the Gizmodo article that explains it pretty well:

New Medium Enterprises will launch its new ML622S HD VMD player next month, a 1080p, single-slotted HDMI 1.3, ethernet-upgradable device that is expected to cost only $150 at many wholesalers (though MSRP is $200).

HD VMD keeps costs low by using the same red lasers we see in DVD products, with the drives described by New Medium as DVD with newer firmware. For now the technology is still MPEG2 based, encoded at somewhere between 40-45MB/s (reports differ), putting it smack between Blu-ray and HD DVD data rates. 7.1 surround sound is supported, but the technology will not support Dolby TrueHD or DTS Master Audio formats.

There will be 20 titles available on HD VMD when it launches…but there is no word as to what those titles will be.

It seems like it’s probably a little too late for this thing to come in and take a commanding position in the HD format wars, especially with the price of HD-DVD players getting very close to the $200 range…but we’ll see what happens.

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Hope you like that post!

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