Plasmon today announced that they have begun initial shipments of their new UDO-DMD (Ultra Density Optical - Digital Master Disk) drives and media to HD DVD content management and mastering solution providers for testing and integration. The UDO-DMD format is part of a technology and business alliance between Mitsubishi Kagaku Media (MKM), Memory Tech Corporation (MTC), and Plasmon to provide secure distribution and long-term storage of HD DVD content between authoring studios and disc mastering facilities.

Two strategic solution providers currently working with DMD are DCA - a provider of signal processing technology, and MTC - who together with Toshiba developed the original HD DVD technology. Both companies have already been shipped evaluation DMD drives and media for system testing and integration into their applications. First generation DMD30 (30.2GB) is designed for the distribution and archive of new HD DVD and existing DVD content. Second generation DMD60 (60GB) is scheduled to launch in mid 2007 and will also support Blu-ray.

"DMD is based on field-proven UDO technology, which dramatically streamlined our development and manufacturing process. Drives with new firmware are complete, we are manufacturing DMD Write Once and Rewritable media, and Windows connectivity software with an extended API for application integration has been released. Momentum for DMD continues to build as we rollout product to our partners and they complete integration into their software applications," commented Stewart Vane-Tempest, DMD product director at plasmon.