New DVD could end format war

[anubis13]

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (Reuters) -- The format war around next generation DVDs may be over before it has begun, thanks to a breakthrough from a British media technology company.

Britain-based New Medium Enterprises (NME) said on Tuesday it 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.

"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.

full article here http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/ptech/09/26/dvd.formats.reut/index.html

[gll99]

Yes... but now a new war is brewing.... who gets on layer1

[tonyp12]

And will these disc work an all HD/blu DVD players made now?

I could see that a blueray player try to read layer1 (that is HD-DVD) and eject the disc as bad before even trying to read layer2.

And what about movies that use two layers?
due to high bitrate or alot of bonus material.

Pretty sure they can not put 4 layers on the disc.
(that will play in todays players)

And how about the Warner employees patent the idea?
How can you be aproved an patent if you do not have the technology to back it up with?

I here by claim a disc that have 4 layers as my patent:
layer1: regular 480p DVD
layer2: blueray
layer3: hd-dvd
layer4: Nova-DVD 2160p (my own future format, also patented by me)

[yoda313]

I could see that a blueray player try to read layer1 (that is HD-DVD) and eject the disc as bad before even trying to read layer2.

Yeah that would certainly be a possiblity.

Now if they could do a forward implementation of this in future bluray/hddvd players to incorporate "superflipper" discs that would be tremendous.

Forget buying a new player just buy one disc and choose the hardware you want. THough I can imagine these "superflipper" discs would be rather pricey - double the price maybe???

And I mean "superflipper" in the figurative sense not the literal sense. I'm sure these will be one sided discs....