New Medium Enterprises has reportedly found a way to manufacture cheap, multi-layer DVD's, capable of holding a movie in a number of different formats.
Britain-based New Medium Enterprises (NME) (NMEN.OB: Quote, Profile, Research) 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. A low yield means that many DVDs coming off the manufacturing lines are not working and have to be discarded.
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.
While NME's new technology probably won't end the format war, it will hopefully lower the cost of multi-format discs. If you'd like to read more, the entire article can be found here.
