FVD officially released

If only they had released this sooner.....It's the perfect step up from single layer DVDs but in this day in age steps take to long and people use elevators, but you never know what might happen.

if they can be used with a single layer burner, thats cool, cause a dvd after taking out unwanted audio will fits perfectly onto a 6GB disc.

pcshateme: They wont be compatible with DVD players or burners or drives. You need to purchase new burner, player and drive in order to use the FVD discs.

well than ill wait for dual layer like the rest of us

Background: Microsoft has been quietly validating its WMV-HD format The Taiwanese manufacturers of DVD players have been paying royalties (about $1.4 billion a year) for the right to manufacture DVD players, and they don't want to be in the same boat with HD. MSoft has cut a deal with these guys for much lower royalty payments. At the same time, while Toshiba and Sony squabble about HD formats, MSoft and Taiwan are already in production. Later this year, the XBox 360 will also support FVD formats. Meanwhile, as part of Windows Media Player (from MP9 onwards) PC's can already play this format. MSoft has persuaded Artisan to release WMV HD disks in certain standard DVD releases: the re-release of Terminator 2, Step Into Liquid, standing inthe shadows of Motown, etc. which have all be out for over a year. You need a 3 gig pentium to playthem: the compression format takes a lot of horsepower to decompress. What this means for the studios? the WMV-HD format will be a viable HD platform very quickly. meanwhile, HP has just unveiled a new HD recording capability for their Windows Media Center Edition (MCE) machines: they will capture HD broadcasts off the airwaves and burn them to DVD. One guess whose format: WMV HD, which is a standard part of Windows MCE. So this is all part of MSoft with their fast boots on getting into every aspect of HD with a MSoft face. Problem is, they won't be supporting anybody else's formats. But the studios won't care, as long as there is a bulk market, and the disks are hard to pirate. The new FVD players are expected to go on sale in Taiwan for $181 in the next few months, and that price will include 10 free movies.