This has piqued my interest for sure...

Well, here is a link to the homepage of the company behind all this:
http://www.nmeinc.com/index.aspx

Some interesting tidbits:

(from press release:)
"NME launches into the worldwide market in October/November with a competitive player and content bundle box which will include 5 new HD VMD titles for Australia, France, Iceland, India, Poland and Scandinavia. HD VMD’s growing list of film content includes blockbuster films from Hollywood, Bollywood and International titles worldwide including 16 Blocks, Apocalypto, Passion of the Christ, Lord of War, Lucky Number Slevin, plus the award winning children’s series, Lazy Town. "

Lots of information on the site - check it out. This does look like the real deal - but do they have enough money to market the player?

If this gets released, my guess is that all three new formats will die... just way too much confusion in the marketplace for general consumers, who will most likely just stick with regular DVDs on account of that.

I feel a great disturbance in the Force. As if millions of Sony fanboys suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.

More on topic, that's what I'm thinking Arbok.

Check this page out - talks about one option for VMD security - and it sounds truly "uncopyable"...

http://www.nmeinc.com/technology_optikey.aspx

HD VMD Disc & Player protected by Optikey®

...

So in other words - by copying the disc, you get a slightly different Optikey value. This can then be read, but it won't match the value used to encode the data on the disc.  

Either the printing press needs to be capable of re-encoding all the data for every different burn - or it has to be capable of producing an exact Optikey value/copy.

Interesting... 

Ok... had a good read now.

It really is just an upgraded DVD format - more layers (up to 10 - 50Gig). The players are simply an upgraded DVD player, that has a HD decoder as well.

I can see a real attraction for existing DVD manufacturers to use something like this. No real reason why existing format DVD is gradually replaced by this... although players DO need to be upgraded (albiet cheaply).

They could trojan the technology into homes pretty easily... new DVD players will support DVD-5, DVD-9, DVD-20 (or higher).

I think China would love this - as may India. It may become a real favourite for illegal copying, and a higher capacity DVD for PC use.

...

Its biggest barrier, is that it may not be considered "new" technology (as its still a red laser - not a blue one), so tech-heads may stub this (and go for a higher cost, higher tech solution). But I personally wouldn't mind if "normal" DVDs suddenly started storing up to 20Gig - or higher.

Both MS & Ninty could love this for future consoles - no retooling, same basic hardware, slightly more expensive - and you get up to 50Gig (rather than 8 Gb at the moment).

(the HD format war just got a lot more interesting and complex...) 

PC use would be great...not even for movies necessarily...I need to move around files sometimes...and copying and pasting to flash drives only works up to 2 gigs for me...7 gigs for a DVD...can't move around more than 10 gigs very quickly...burning a 30 gig disc (if it was fast enough) would be very useful.

i really don't see any major form of success in the nearby future for this format.
putting content in HD takes more work and time. that cost to the manufacturer or studio will pop-up in your movie price. and with major hollywood studios already investing bigg bucks in the current HD formats, i really don't see them jumping ship to support another format. i would be interested in seeing if these discs can output the current HD quality i'm currently enjoying (in both 1080p picture and uncompressed sound) with BR. price is one thing, support is another. i go where the movies i love go.
Star Wars (20th Century Fox) - Blu-Ray
Disney - Blu-Ray
Tarentino - Blu-Ray
it will be unlikely that a third format will servive when many have already invested in a HD format already.
and i dont think will attract any newcomers either. seeing as most of them have already remained firm on the possition that states "until a victor is claimed, i'm staying clear of HD"
i believe it's too late for a third competitor.
if anything it will be the Ross Perot of the HD war. (U.S. Presidential Election Humor) sorry couldn't think of a better analogy

I am waiting for dirt cheap 16 gig flash memory. The potential for good games with no load times makes me happy.

i was typing up a long response... and then i realized all that i was saying is that stuff like this buys time for online delivery.  i think bandwidth actually isn't as big of an issue, but the businesses haven't gotten the distribution deals quite set up yet.  technologically speaking online distribution is all set.