China's Next Generation DVD Alternative

[Chris Gohlke]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://techdirt.com/articles/20061206/133015.shtml' target='_blank'>http://techdirt.com/articles/20061206/133015.shtml</a><br /><br /></div><i>"China has traditionally treated any kind of global technology standard like the bubonic plague, offering up their own standards in an effort to limit reliance on foreign technology, and net licensing fees should the standards see foreign adoption. This government backed push has included attempts to create their own Wi-Fi encryption standard (WAPI), their own 3G wireless standard (TD-SCDMA), and their own next-generation DVD standard, dubbed EVD (enhanced versatile disc). First introduced back in 2003, the solution waddled aimlessly for a while as creators squabbled over royalties. Today Chinese hardware vendors unveiled the first round of prototype EVD players, and promised they'd switch to the new standard completely by 2008. The standard uses conventional red lasers combined with advanced compression technology to soak your retinas with 1080p HD video, but at a fraction of the cost of HD-DVD or Blu-Ray players. High-def capable players at prices as low as $87 sure sounds tasty, but adoption elsewhere is unlikely, given the collective muscle of the companies backing the primary two next-gen DVD formats."</i><br /><br />Even if the Chinese could manage to get a third standard onto the world market, chances of content providers latching onto another format are probably slim to none. Still China is a big enough market on its own and at home there probably is more than enough clout to make sure content is in their format of choice.

[jeffd]

While something like h264 on dvd sounds like a promising idea (You can pretty much compress a dvd with little quality loss to the size of a cd in h264), sadly it looks like the chinese went with licensing a whole new compression from on2, vp5 and vp6. Even the audio is some new revision of EAC.

[Damion Chaplin]

Sounds like a lame attempt at curbing Chinese DVD pirating (or HD-DVD pirating in this case).

[Felix Torres]

Actually, chinese piracy would more likely be helped by this than hindered. After all, red laser DVDs can be burned on any PC using dirt cheap media. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD require expensive burners that are rare to start with and very expensive media.

This is all about IP; patents and copyrights and licensing fees. Half the OEM cost of a $30 DVD player is IP charges. Because of this, H.264 would be the last thing they want, what with its higher royalties on content and hardware.

The Taiwanese FVD format uses VC-1 because it is much cheaper to license and produces better video, and even that proved too rich for the mainland manufacturers. Those folks are thinking along the same lines as Sony; that as hardware manufacturers they can set the standards. Because without affordable player hardware no standard can endure.

Implicit in this strategy of theirs is the threat of replacement of regular DVDs (which come with the full IP charge of Mpeg and the DVD spec) with EVDs that have neither.

And, of course, if the China, Inc manufacturers choose to play hardball on blue-laser manufacturing, Sony and Toshiba might have to go hunting for alternate suppliers of low-end players or risk ending up as a newer day Laserdisk format.

Not sure if India or Mexico are positioned to deliver a manufacturing alternative right away and, as we all know, the window of opportunity for a blue laser format to entrench itself is fairly small right now: holographic storage hits the market this month and a consumer product could be unveiled as early as next year.

[Damion Chaplin]

Actually, chinese piracy would more likely be helped by this than hindered. After all, red laser DVDs can be burned on any PC using dirt cheap media. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD require expensive burners that are rare to start with and very expensive media.

Hence the use of the word 'lame'. :wink: But really I was talking about US-released HD-DVDs pirated in China.

[Felix Torres]

Ah, I see.
Well, in that context; yes, EVD might have a minor effect on HD-DVD piracy, as far as the original disks go. (If you have no players, there is no market for the disks. Fair enough.)
But...
Do you remember VCD?
A *lot* of movies ended up on VCD in asia that were never licensed for the format...

I'm thinking a lot of back-alley business will feature transcoded HD (or upscaled DVD) content on EVD... :wink: