China to Promote Own Alternative to DVDs, EVD

supermanksu writes "Seeking to compete on its own terms in the lucrative entertainment industry, China announced a government-funded project Tuesday to promote an alternative to DVDs and 'attack the market share' of the global video format." This has been an ongoing project.

Comments

Licensing and market share

[Eberlin]

"It was developed by a company called Beijing E-World Technology Co. Ltd. using video-compression technologies licensed by On2 Technologies, an American company."

At quick glance, the license doesn't seem "open" which means you'll end up with another controlling factor one way or another...and someone will have to come up and battle with a different version of deCSS. If that is the case, it can't be good.

Secondly, DVD has a heck of a market share. I suppose if anything has a population to take a chunk out of market share, it would be China. However, from observation, it would be difficult to budge the hold that DVD currently has.

I'm thinking along the lines of Ogg Vorbis vs. MP3 -- with Ogg being free (though I'm not sure the EVD will be a free format) and MP3 having the market share. Ogg may have crept up in terms of getting hardware/software support, but it's still not dislodging the majority of MP3 users even though it's of a higher technical quality.

I suppose any disruptive technology to run interference on DVD would be a Good Thing(TM)

Re:Not good enough

[SuuSt]

Wuh?!

"It took forever for people to fully embrace DVDs"

Were you not born until CD's had already replaced casset tapes? The DVD format was the most quickly adopted new media format ever. CD's were around since (I think) the late 1970's, relatively easy to get a hold of by the early-mid 80's, but not really fully adopted until the early 90's. That's around 15 years from invention to full adoption. It took DVD's something like 4 years to do that.

Then of course there were the superior formats that were never adopted (read: laserdisks).

Anybody old enough to know how long it took tapes to become common over LP's or eight tracks?

Re:Not good enough

[fishbonez]

The market in China is mostly VCDs with pirated DVDs being mostly for tourists and the high-end local consumers. It seems like they are positioning the EVD as a local alternative to DVDs. It'll probably replace VCDs as the local format of choice.

I suspect the EVD might actually be endorsed by the big US media companies. If the country responsible for a lot of piracy uses a peculiar local format, it essentially makes those discs region encoded. Of course the manufacturers in the US and Europe would also have to agree not to support the format for it to be effective at stemming piracy.

Ogg Theora!

[steveha]

My first thought was "I hope they are going to use Ogg Theora for this." Then in the article text it said that they have been "developed... using video-compression technologies licensed by On2 Technologies". Folks, Ogg Theora is based on the On2 compression technologies!

The Chinese market is huge. Many DVD players are made in China. It seems very likely to me that the EVD standard will at least carve out a niche for itself. Potentially, it will have sufficient impact that all future DVD players will be made EVD-compatible. It ought to just be a matter of putting some more stuff in the ROM of the DVD player. It this really is based on Ogg Theora, there will be no fees or royalties to pay.

Of course, the MPAA will probably drag their heels about releasing Hollywood movies in EVD format. But I would love it if there was a widespread standard based on Ogg Theora, so I could burn my own discs using nothing but free software and know that my friends have players that can watch the discs.

steveha

Re:ugh

[Strudelkugel]

Maybe I'm wearing a tin-foil hat, but I sure don't believe China wants open formats. They would rather dominate the market so that they can get all of the royalty fees from other nation's vendors.

Problem with the Chinese strategy is that they don't have any content. All the major content providers won't release their content in the China-Uber-Alles format if they can't control it. Seems to me China has to depend on indie films to carry this ball, but unlike OSS, it takes more than a few pizzas and caffeine to make a flick, unless the PRC is about to flood the world with Communist pr0n...