The company founded in
Nevada as Shopoverseas.com on August 2, 1999, changed its name to New Medium Enterprises, Inc. (NME) on July 10, 2000. On April 20, 2001, it became a public company, with shares traded
over-the-counter with symbol MNEN. On January 13, 2004 it acquired the intellectual property for multi-layer optical discs from MultiDisc Ltd. and TriGM International S.A, and became headquartered in London. On June 14, 2005, Rupert Snow became chairman, and Mahesh Jayanarayan became chief executive officer, replacing interim CEO Irene Kuan. On July 1, 2005,
Eugene Levich was appointed chief technical officer of NME. Levich had a long history of developing multi-layer formats, such as the fluorescent multilayer disc of
Constellation 3D. In December 2005, NME announced an agreement with Chinese-based company E-World which was developing a similar format called
Enhanced Versatile Disc. At
CeBIT in March 2006, NME demonstrated a prototype VMD player and announced that it was expecting to launch the format in the third quarter of 2006. NME claimed 100 titles would be available in 2006. At the Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association trade show in September 2007, NME exhibited two players set for release in October 2007. Twenty US titles were available at launch time, including some from
Icon Productions,
Paramount Pictures,
Walt Disney Pictures,
New Line Cinema,
DreamWorks SKG,
Lionsgate and
The Weinstein Company. NME also signed a deal with
Bollywood production company
Eros Group who intended to release 50 Bollywood features on the format. The two initial players to be released were the ML622S and the ML777S. The ML777S included
USB ports for connection to external storage devices and a
media card reader. The manufacturers hoped to sell the format as a lower cost alternative to other optical technologies. However, the
Great Recession of 2008 struck about this time, and NME struggled to stay in business. On June 13, 2008 Geoffrey Russell, the interim chief executive officer of New Medium Enterprises, Inc., notified the US
Securities and Exchange Commission that the company would be terminating the registration of the company, and that NMEN would cease filing reports with the SEC. The date of effect of this action was 90 days after 12 June 2008. In August 2008 in the UK, New Medium Electronics Limited, New Medium Entertainment Limited and New Medium Optics Limited notified
Companies House of their applications for voluntary striking-off. In October 2008, the technology behind HD-VMD was revived by companies Royal Digital Media, Anthem Digital and DreamStream to produce a new 100 GB optical disc. Anthem Digital's chairman Michael Jay Solomon was the former chairman of New Medium Enterprises. As of December 2010, Royal Digital Media, Anthem Digital and DreamStream web sites were no longer available. ==Technical specifications==