Constellation 3D Inc. (C3D) (Nasdaq OTC:CFMD) will demonstrate its Fluorescent Multilayer Disc (FMD) videodisc technology at a forthcoming satellite-delivered Digital Cinema film premiere of Bounce hosted by Miramax Films. The event will be held in New York in November at a date and location to be announced.

The premiere of the movie in the new Digital Cinema format showcases this emerging phase of cinema technology, in which video and audio information is stored not on 35mm celluloid reels but on digital media such as C3D’s ultra high capacity FMD videodisc. The first generation of this FMD media, with capacities up to 100GB, will offer higher resolution, higher bit-rates and greater realism than current consumer video formats.

FMD playback systems for Digital Cinema, HDTV and a Personal Video Recorder are currently under development with industry partners. These systems, due for commercial release next year, are based on inexpensive red laser technology and therefore are capable of playing current CD and DVD content.

The introduction of the FMD smashes the barriers of existing data storage formats. Depending on the application and the market requirements, the first generation of 120mm (CD Sized) FMD ROM discs will hold 50 – 140 Gigabytes of pre-recorded data on 12 – 30 data layers with a total thickness of under 2mm. In comparison, a standard DVD disc holds just 4.7 gigabytes. With C3D’s proprietary parallel reading and writing technology, data transfer speeds can exceed 1 gigabit per second, again depending on the application and market need.

FMD drives will be similar in size, design and price to CD and DVD drives and players currently on the market. Lasers and laser focusing technology will be the same and only minor modifications are required in the signal-processing unit to allow for the reading of the incoherent light emitted by an FMD disc rather than the coherent light of a CD or DVD. Early applications for this exciting new product include digital cinema and HDTV players, internet content streaming and data warehousing.

Don’t panic yet…our DVD decks are safe for some time to come. But it’s interesting to note how quickly storage capacity and data throughput is growing. Let’s hope companies keep these 2 words in mind: Backwards Compatability.