Startup Touts New Way to Combine Blu-Ray and HD DVD

Technology Company Says Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD War May Be Avoided

by Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 09/26/2006 | 11:59 PM ]

The format war around next-generation DVDs may be over thanks to a breakthrough from a British media technology company. A news-story by Reuters says that Britain-based New Medium Enterprises had solved a technical production problem that makes it possible to produce a cheap multiple-layer DVD disk containing one film in different, competing formats.

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“Current technologies to create multiple layer disks mostly don’t work. We’ve created a technology for mass production of multiple layers that does not suffer from the well known problem of low yields,” said NME Chief Technology Officer Eugene Levich.

The production costs of a multi-layer DVD using the new NME technology are estimated to be around 9 cents, compared with the 6 cents for a standard single-layer play-back DVD, according to Dutch company ODMS, one of the world’s leading makers of production lines for optical disks.

The technological breakthrough comes one week after three employees at movie studio Warner Bros. filed a patent for the application of multiple formats on a single DVD disc.

"There’s no collision between Warner and us. They patent the application, we are patenting the technology. These are complementary patents. I’m glad it’s happened. Warner opened our eyes, because it shows they really want to do this and create multi-format, multi-layer disks,” added Eugene Levich.

Multiple format DVD disks can solve the emerging war between the two new high capacity DVD formats: Blu-Ray, which is backed by Sony Corp., and Toshiba-supported HD-DVD.

• Reuters: New Technology Could nip DVD Format War in the Bud.