Late comer to the the High Definition war, HD VMD (Versatile Multilayer Disc) format has finally launched.

New Medium Enterprises' 1080p set-top players, which use the new standard will be sold on Amazon.com and in stores such as Radio Shack and Costco for around $150.

This is half the cost of the least-expensive 1080p HD DVD player, and perhaps a fourth the cost of the least-expensive Blu-ray player.

The other advantage is that the movies that work in them will be much cheaper.

The standard uses red-laser technology already used to create DVDs and can hold up to 30GB on a single side. The format uses MPEG-2 and VC1 video formats to encode at 1080p resolution for the time being, and will possibly move to the H.264 format in the future.

So far 20 US movie titles will be available, including many from Mel Gibson's Icon Entertainment International studios.

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