New standard proposed for HD DVD content mastering

18 Sep 2006

Three major companies with data storage interests have announced an alliance to develop a new optical storage format called UDO-DMD.

Ultra Density Optical - Digital Master Disc technology has been designed by Mitsubishi Kagaku Media (MKM), Memory Tech Corp. (MTC), and Plasmon. The companies have developed this technology for the secure distribution and long-term storage of important HD DVD content between authoring studios and disc mastering facilities.

Based on blue laser UDO technology, DMD drives and media are optimized to meet the security and reliability requirements of the HD DVD content industries.

Many studios depend on magnetic tape and RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) systems to transport and archive valuable content. Video content is often lost on tapes because they are fragile for transport and unreliable for long-term storage, and managing rapidly growing data on RAID is too expensive for archives that must be maintained for many years.

However, UDO-DMD provides a stable media housed in a cartridge that has a data life greater than tape or RAID storage. DMD also provides physical WORM (Write Once Read Many) recording for content authenticity.

Plasmon will manufacture DMD drives and media; MKM will manufacture DMD media and provide global distribution under its Verbatim brand, while MTC will promote the technology worldwide. DMD will initially be released with a 30 GB content capacity (DMD30), growing to 60 GB in 2Q07 (DMD60).

"While UDO-DMD is a new product, it is based on our existing UDO technology," said Nigel Street, Plasmon's CEO. "The optimized features that we have added to UDO-DMD will provide the HD DVD content industry with the capabilities it needs."

"HD DVD content is physically transported between the studios and the pre-mastering facility," said Hidemi Yoshida, CTO of MKM. "So it is vital that the media be robust and stable. As a non-magnetic, phase change recording technology, it is immune to damage from magnetic field and X-ray exposure. DMD provides a data life of over 50 years which is ideal for applications where content can be recalled for re-mastering over many years."

"With availability early next year, DMD60 will enable the full HD DVD content to be written on side one with the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) version stored on side two. This will simplify the long-term storage of the disc," added Shiroharu Kawasaki, president and CEO, of Memory Tech.