New Medium Enterprises launches HD VMD effort
By Susanne Ault -- Video Business, 2/7/2008
FEB. 7 | SANTA MONICA, Calif.—Armed with a new replication facility and a veteran of the TV industry as its new chairman, New Medium Enterprises continues to try to convince content owners and consumers that its HD VMD high-definition format is a less expensive alternative to Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD.
Chairman Michael Jay Solomon, co-founder of Telepictures (since folded into Warner Bros. Television Distribution), led meetings here Tuesday to formally introduce HD VMD to the U.S. HD VMD’s exclusive retailer, PCRush.com, and its primary U.S. content supplier, Anthem Pictures, also participated in the public relations effort.
Although all the major studios are currently producing high-def titles in either Blu-ray or HD DVD, NME is hopeful it can interest smaller content suppliers and retailers in HD VMD because title manufacturing, players and software are all less expensive than the two major formats.
Based on traditional DVD red-laser technology, HD VMD players are being offered in the U.S. as $199 hardware/software bundles with a player plus two Anthem Pictures titles, Mother Ghost and Cutting Room. That compares with $399 to $499 for stand-alone BD players. Toshiba recently cut the price of its entry HD DVD player to $149, but its other models sell for $200 and above.
“Blu-ray and HD DVD came in earlier” to the domestic marketplace, added Alexandros Potter, director of U.S. operations at NME. “But we have a unique product that is accessible to everyone.”
Despite the fact that its hardware is sold only at PCRush.com, by Amazon.com third-party sellers and at its own NME.com store in the U.S, NME projects it can sell 500,000 players globally by the end of the year. Additionally, NME believes it can attract additional indie suppliers like Anthem because of the low cost of manufacturing HD VMD at its new replication facility in the Netherlands.
“We want to create a huge Spanish-language library,” said Solomon, without providing specifics. “There are not a lot of others [from the BD and HD DVD camps] doing that. There is a huge amount of faith-based content from the mega-churches. We can try to corner that.”
Solomon also contends that consumers are more able to afford the $20 per title HD VMD pricing than BD and HD DVD, which can retail for around $30.
According to Anthem CEO Charles Adelman, small companies are prevented from entering the BD and HD DVD marketplace because production costs are relatively high, at $2.75 to $3.50 per unit, compared to about $1 for HD VMD or standard DVD.
This year, Anthem plans to release three titles a month from its 100-movie library in HD VMD.
Although NME feels it’s not necessarily dependent on persuading the majors to back the HD VMD format, Solomon will be actively pitching the studios in the next several months.
The company does have deals with several foreign distributors with rights to major films abroad. For example, an HD VMD edition of Apocalypto is now available in Australia and New Zealand.
