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Believe it or not, yes – there is. Designed as a low-cost competitor to HD DVD and Blu-ray, comes HD-VMD (HiDef Versatile Multilayer Disc). Designed by New Media Enterprises, this budding rival in the format wars is designed to give a low budget option for high definition with players shipping at a cost less than the lowest priced HD DVD and Blu-ray players … about $190 US.

Even though the technology is proprietary and there is no concrete support from Hollywood in the form of movie titles to date (although VMD titles do include Pulp Fiction, Babel, and the Saw horror series), what makes the VMD format attractive is it’s price point, which can be achieved through the use of production techniques currently employed to create standard definition DVDs. The VMD uses a 40 Mbps red laser which reads four layer discs hold up to 24GB of information. Plans are also in the works increase capacity and employ blue lasers for great bandwidth. VMD Players are also region free, which makes it internationally attractive as well.

Supporting full 1080i and 1080p resolutions, in addition to standard definition MPEG-2 and MPEG-1. It also can read VC-1, H.264 formats. All in Dolby Digital and DTS audio, but none of the more advanced audio formats you might find on Blu-Ray and HD DVD players. Even the least expensive HD VMD players offer HDMI and component outputs, and will scale old-school DVDs up to 1080p over the HDMI connection.

Source: Amazon via TechnaBob

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