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

ugh

[fjordboy]

First we have region encoded dvds so we can't watch dvds from out of our country or "zone" ... and now we won't even be able to fall back on "reverse engineering" our dvd players to play these things! Ugh. Just what we need, more complexity in an already needlessly complex market.

Re:ugh

[sillybilly]

In fact I welcome such a move - if it's free for everyone to make their own home movies, without having to pay royalties for mpeg2 compression patents, and you can still fit the same amount of movie in a DVD, then why not? I hope the players will have hardware to play EVD movies, and if so, I'm a consumer, whatever is cheaper/better for me I take it, no matter where it comes from. Why is it that we have free bzip2 and ogg vorbis and similar compression methods, but for video we all must pay royalties. The tmpgenc program used to be a complete freeware, used to do mpeg2's for svcd's and dvd's for free, but the mpeg consortium got on the author's case so now he must collect payment for his program, now you only get 30 days evaluation time. Hey if someone wants to give me something equivalent or better for free, I'm not gonna be stupid and say no.

Re:ugh

[Tackhead]

> First we have region encoded dvds so we can't watch dvds from out of our country or "zone" ... and now we won't even be able to fall back on "reverse engineering" our dvd players to play these things! Ugh. Just what we need, more complexity in an already needlessly complex market.

This is Tuesday. China's the Good Guy today.

Seriously - an alternative to DVDs that supports HDTV and has no copy protection, region control, or licensing (CSS) restrictions. How bad is that? If DVD had been invented by geeks, that's what DVD would have been!

Seems this is just the logical successor to VCD or SVCD. It's also backed up by tens of thousands of tanks whose commanders can tell Jack Valenti precisely where to stick it.

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...

Re:ugh

[SampleMinded]

Problem with the Chinese strategy is that they don't have any content

Hong Kong (now part of China) is famous for its movies. You know those crazy actions movies that inspired the Matrix. Not to mention Croaching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

I can't imagine the market for Chinese films decreasing as that country continues to become more weathly.

Re:ugh

[tkw954]

Problem with the Chinese strategy is that they don't have any content.

I think you mean that they don't export any content. There is a huge amount of domestic video being passed around in China (Chinese movies, music videos and concerts and TV programs). Of course, since the rest of the world doesn't speak much Chinese, most of this content stays at home.

Also, because of the mass producing pirates pushing prices down, very few legit DVDs are available. Most content is distributed in the form of cheaper-to-produce VCDs.

I see this new format as China's attempt to improve their video quality while not greatly increasing the cost of production. They probably don't really care if the rest of the world jumps on board. There are 1.3 billion domestic consumers.

Re:ugh

[jandersen]

"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."

Yes, you're wearing a tinfoil hat. But as we say - a thief believes every man steals. Being American, you are used to the fact that American companies and the American government want to dominate the world and rake in all the wealth they can get - that what capitalism is all about.

As for Chinese films - I have seen them, have you? Even the most terrible Chinese B-film (or perhaps that would be 'xia' rather than 'B') isn't worse than the corresponding American type of film.

China has produced some breathtakingly beautiful films, and the good news for us in The West is that we haven't seen it all before. Different culture, you see.

Re:ugh

[Crayon Kid]

I'm not sure what you mean by saying "it's a Taiwanese movie". It was shot mostly in China, the director, Ang Lee was born in Taiwan but he's been around the world pretty much, the Wu Xia genre is equally popular in Taiwan and China, James Schamus is from California, Michelle Yeoh is Malaysian, Chow Yun Fat is from Hong Kong, Ziyi Zhang was born in Beijing, Chen Chang was indeed born in Taiwan but if you look at his filmogrpahy you'll notice it's pretty international too. So there.

Not good enough

[r_glen]

I don't think it's wise to force everyone into a new, irrelevant (unless you own an HDTV) format just to avoid paying American royalty fees. It took forever for people to fully embrace DVDs, even with all the benefits over VHS. This is not a great enough leap forward to be successful anywhere.

Also, the acronym EVD ("enhanced versatile disc") seems extremely contrived to sound just like 'DVD'.

Re:Not good enough

[agutier]

I don't think it's wise to force everyone into a new, irrelevant (unless you own an HDTV) format just to avoid paying American royalty fees.

Doubt they will force everyone, it will be enough for the format to be adopted domestically. As long as they market a combo DVD-EVD player, and push for releases of content on EVD in China, then what does it matter if you purchase this format or that?

DVDs are already segemented acording to their region, which might end up making it easier to introduce a regional DVD alternative. They don't have to target the US, just Asia, and other Asia electronics manufacturers might see the benifit of a regional technology for domestic consumption.

Re:Not good enough

[tarquin_fim_bim]

So, you imagine a high percentage of the Chinese population already have DVD players? We're talking about a 1.3 billion population here not California, the national savings would be inordinate.

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.

Re:Not good enough

[l810c]

Also, the acronym EVD ("enhanced versatile disc") seems extremely contrived to sound just like 'DVD'.

They should make it sound more 'Chinesey' like their Fireworks and Food:

'Eternal Visual Delight'

Re:Not good enough

[twistedcubic]

I agree. A country that has 20% of the world's population has no business throwing all its money away to foreign monopolies. China can create its own standards, and have the rest of the world adopt them (and not vice-versa) becuase the foreign businesses couldn't resist the money-making opportunity. If China were buying Microsoft licenses at the same rate per populace as in the U.S., then they would be sending Microsoft enough money to buy a few countries of its own.

Re:Not good enough

[thermopile]

This is getting off topic, but ....

Billy Joel's "Songs in the Attic" was the first album ever released on CD, way back in 1981. One could argue that CD's didn't really catch on until 10 years later.

DVD's were supposed to flood the market for Christmas 1996, but didn't quite make it in time. That's right, kids, 1996. The titles were originally released in Japan: Blade Runner, The Assassin, The Fugitive, and Eraser. (yechhh) Then the first ones in the US were on March 19, 1997, and were IMAX remakes. Batman and Space Jam came next.

Seven years ago. I think it's fair to say DVDs have taken a strong hold in a pretty short period of time.

Re:Not good enough

[MrResistor]

I would imagine tapes went quicker; there were very few cars manufactured eight track players, and probably none with LP's.

Actually...

Seems like a disaster in the making to me, but people gotta have their tunes!

Re:Not good enough

[F34nor]

It's analouge so you have a wave rather than a bit stream i.e. warmer sound, better seperation, and etc.

It think the original poster meant better than VHS.

p.s. Betamax lost becasue Sony wouldn't license the format to Porn. Sounds like the same argument from the Chinese...

Re:Not good enough

[tarquin_fim_bim]

In two or three years China is going to be the second largest economy in the world. In ten it will be the largest, it's going to happen, I can't understand anyone thinking that they have to grab apron strings. China is a huge market, go with the flow or get caught in the undertow.

Re:Not good enough

[Neop2Lemus]

When I was a kid we had friends who had a record player in thier car. They were rich (read doctor).

I remember it because whenever we'd go on class trips I'd make sure I was in their car. We listened to Star Wars and Return of the Jedi. I still remeber holding the 33 1/3 sleeves in the car.

Re:Not good enough

[jpmkm]

2. They're fragile. You can drop a VHS cassette onto concrete - don't try this with your DVDs

Have you ever actually done that? VHS cassettes consist of a few big pieces of plastic that snap together. Drop that on concrete and there is a good chance it'll break apart. Drop a small, light piece of plastic, nothing happens. Maybe a few scratches, but so long as you don't throw it on the concrete there won't be any major damage.

Re:Not good enough

[Simonetta]

Thank you for taking the time to list the good and bad points about DVDs.

I got a DVD-ROM for my PC about ten months ago and have been getting DVD disks exclusively from the public library since then.

Here's what I like about DVDs:

-clear sharp image on PC monitor.
-ability to copy the movie to hard disk so that I can watch it for 15 or 20 minutes at a time over several days or weeks after returning the DVD to the library.
-ability to get the text dialog as subtitles from the movie into a text file.
-ability to play the movie back in French or Spanish, which is great for language learning. In the same area, the ability to view the film in French or Spanish with French or Spanish subtitles would be fantastic for language learning if the foreign language dialog actually matched the subtitles. But it rarely does because usually the movie is translated twice for each language; once by the subtitle writer and again by the voice-over crew.
-Being able to save the movie in DivX format and giving a copy to a friend on a 20 cent CD.
-Skipping the endless corporate logos and previews after copying the movie to the hard disk.
-Fast forwarding 16x or 32x the dull and dumb parts.
-capturing a screen snapshot as a JPG file image.

The things that are touted as DVD advantages, such as director's commentary and outtakes, seem to be of little importance.

Outside of films, the ability to put 4.7 gigabytes on a single $1 disk is certainly going to catch on soon. I once sent an e-mail to the local classic-Rock FM station manager saying that every song that they've played for the past thirty years would fit on a single DVD if all the songs were stored in MP3 format. She actually wrote back with lots of numbers showing that I wasn't correct. But actually I was just trying to say that they should start playing different music instead of the same one cut for every album from that time period.

Also, I have stopped going to movie theatres since getting a DVD-ROM. The idea of paying $9 to see the same-old-stuff redone over and over (another buddy cop movie anyone?) has just done lost its appeal.

DVDs are going to paint Hollywood in a corner because their average budget per film is going up much faster than the actual number of people who go to movies. The movies are getting more expensive every year and are being focused on a younger demographic every year. Within about five years, Hollywood will find itself with a whole season of $200 million movies that bring in $100 million each in box-office and $50 million in rentals.

Hollywood in 2003 is in the same place that the dot-com industry was in 1998. Completely convinced of the inevitability of its continued growth to the point where they believe that they have finally created an industry that transcends basic economic cycles.

Stay tuned...

Re:Not good enough

[NanoGator]

"The DVD format was the most quickly adopted new media format ever."

To be fair, the difference between CD's and cassettes is not as big as the difference between DVDs and VHS. CDs were nice because they were higher quality and you could instantly skip to other songs, but they were trouble to jog/travel with. DVDs are higher visual/audio quality than VHS, but they're also smaller (CD's weren't as compact as casettes) and they have extra bonus features that VHS couldn't hope to do.

CD's were an upgrade to casettes with tradeoffs, whereas DVDs are a much larger upgrade to VHS with much fewer in terms of tradeoffs. It's not all that surprising that DVDs took off.

EVDs are higher resolution and may be cheaper, but is that enough to be adopted? Boy do I doubt it.

Re:Not good enough

[mclove]

Absolutely, in fact this is almost certainly the plan these manufacturers have in mind.

The pirates are always happy to pursue any moneymaking opportunity they can find; within a few months of their introduction, pirated DVD's were already almost as widely available as VCD's, and no doubt once people start buying EVD players the same thing will happen.

Then, once people have EVD players and widely available disks, legitimate movie companies will have no choice but to adopt EVD; otherwise, they'll have a base of millions and millions of consumers who have no choice but to buy pirated EVD's. And considering the pragmatic-to-a-fault attitude of the Chinese courts and legislators towards such matters, I suspect that they'll give the studios a hard time about cracking down on pirated EVD's until legitimate alternatives are available. Yes, since they're not well-protected those EVD's can then be easily pirated as well, but since that's already true about DVD's it hardly makes a difference at this point (and will probably translate to further cost savings since there's less sophisticated decoding hardware required, perhaps even allowing them to use older and cheaper processes for chip fabrication etc).

So this could be a real coup for the Chinese - single-handedly force the studios to adopt a poorly-secured, proprietary video format just to stay in the market.

Don't look for these to show up in the US, though; DVD players are already way too common, so they'll never show up officially, and considering eBay's sheer and utter spinelessness towards MPAA legal threats it's doubtful we'll see them show up there either.

Re:Not good enough

[geekoid]

stupidity.
Now where's my billions?

Re:Not good enough

[WoTG]

I'd also toss in the technological differences between the time CD's were launched to the time DVD's were launched. CD's were the first shiny little 5 inch disks to be produced. A whole lot of technology and factories had to be developed to bring the prices down. In contrast, DVD's piggy backed off of a lot of the previous work. It's the same physical size, and the same general stamping technology. At the player end of things, most of the mechanics and a chunk of the firmware is the same.

Another factor is the use of DVD's in PCs. This second market didn't exist when CD's were first launched. The extra volume helped the price of players come down quickly. Lastly, manufacturing itself is different today, i.e. globalized production and trade.

All of this led to cheaper players quicker. Which then leads to faster adoption.

FWIW, DVD's have tradeoffs too, a big one. They don't record! (usually) I suspect that non-recordability is a bigger deal with video than audio, at least it is to me. Oh, and somehow the porn industry is probably a factor... it usually is, when the technology involves video.

Re:Not good enough

[Mr. Codey]

...CD's were around since (I think) the late 1970's

According to Encyclopedia Britannica: "... Coinvented by Philips Electronics N.V. and Sony Corporation in 1980, ..."

Horrywood

[hoggoth]

Oh well, I'll just have to do without all those great movies made in China.

Re:Horrywood

[syrinx]

i feel compelled to point out that it's Japanese that doesn't have the L sound in their language, causing Japanese persons to say words with an L with the closest thing they can come up with, that is, R.

While I can't claim to know much about all Chinese languages, at least some of them have the L sound, so they probably have no problem saying "Hollywood", even if they have a comical accent.

Re:Horrywood

[tehanu]

Mandarin can distinguish between L and R. Cantonese is similar to Japanese in that it doesn't distinguish between the two - actually it's more like it just doesn't have 'r' - go to a Cantonese-English dictionary, you'll see that when they list the words romanised in alphabetical order, there are no words listed as starting with 'r'. Go look in a Mandarin-English dictionary and you'll see plenty of words starting with 'r' and 'l'. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that Cantonese is the Chinese language that most closely resembles late Tang dynasty Chinese, which is also when some of the heaviest language importation from China to Japan occurred. Mandarin developed later, I think around the time the Mongolians ruled China. Southern Chinese languages tend to be older in general than Northern Chinese languages. Everytime there's a barbarian invasion, everyone flees south :)

Re:Horrywood

[kamapuaa]

Nothing to match the quality of, uhmmm...

1. Elf
2. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
3. Matrix: Revolutions
4. Brother Bear
5. Looney Tunes: Back in Action
6. Love Actually
7. Scary Movie 3
8. Radio
9. Tupac: Resurrection
10. Mystic River

Some of the best movies out there are Chinese. Check out Wong Kar Wai's movies, Jet Li's movies, Sammi Cheng's movies - different genres but great shit. In addition, Chinese audiences are more open to foreign movies than Americans - VCD shops will sell top American, Korean, and Japanese stuff as well.

WoO!

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans can start selling home-made $3 Chinese EVDs! Turnabout, etc.

Ongoing

[Hi_2k]

This has been an ongoing project. Newspeak for "Yeah, this is a dupe, I know it, but gosh darn it I'm gonna post it anyway!"

Good news!

[Rex Code]

Other formats that China has backed in the past include things like VCD, SVCD, CVD (China Video Disc, an SVCD-like format in NTSC resolution), and others. These tend to be no-nonsense unencrypted formats that are easier to write software to produce (look how much more free software exists to burn VCD/SVCD/CVD than DVD), and are supported by most Chinese DVD players (APEX, for example).

This will help keep the ability to produce and distribute content within reach of everyone, instead of just the large media companies.

Re:Format?

[NeverReminder]

Because they 1) Dont want to pay royalties 2) Want more pie from this market 3) Because they can Since it's goverment funded, quite simple would be to raise custom fees for imported DVD, and force foreign companies to produce movies in new format for new market. Then companies will try to sale same EVD disks in other markets, just to cut some expenses, and we will get another pain in ass trying to make a rip from new media :)

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)

In Related News, Jack Valenti . . .

[StefanJ]

. . . calls on President Bush for a preemptive nuclear strike.

"This isn't about marketing dominance or intellectual property rights," said the movie industry mogul, "They hate our freedom!"

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:Ogg Theora!

[Vann_v2]

China licensed VP5 and VP6 for use in the EVD standard, at least according to On2 themselves. However, Ogg Theora is based on VP3 but is not perfectly compatible.

Predicting 0% marketshare for EVD

[G4from128k]

I don't see EVD being much of a issue outside of China because it does not offer any advantage to consumers (DVD has HDTV plans too). Unless China wants to spend $100 million (or more) marketing the new format to Western consumers, they aren't going to get any market share here. Even in China, it will be an uphill battle. I don't see why Chinese consumers would buy the more expensive format, unless they are Patriotic and have money to burn. Also, I'd bet that media production has reached critical mass for DVD. How will China convince pressing plants to adapt to EVD?

Re:Predicting 0% marketshare for EVD

[pla]

I don't see EVD being much of a issue outside of China because it does not offer any advantage to consumers

Reduced patent encumbrance means cheaper players and media. Everyone wants that (except the MPAA and the MPEG consortium).

Basing their codec on an open source one means that we'll have the ability to play these under Linux without breaking the law (and perhaps even encode our own material without uber-expensive authoring software (or breaking the law)).

No region protection means we can buy the $39 special at WallyWorld without needing to research it to make sure we can region-unlock it to watch imported movies.

Using a "modern" encoding technique, rather than crappy ol' MPEG-2, doesn't just mean it can encode for HDTV... It means, for standard DVD-sized frames (720x480 and there like), higher quality images in the same space, or more material at the same quality. How many DVDs have you watched where, if you paused it (and sometimes without even doing that) you could see encoding artifacts? Personally, I'd say I have yet to see a DVD where I couldn't see at least one glaring encoding artifact somewhere during the movie.


How will China convince pressing plants to adapt to EVD?

I may have missed something, but I had the impression that they made this as a sort of "DVD without the encumbrance", not "DVD with new stuff"... Basically a data-mode DVD with a new media compression format, which any existing plant could produce, and most existing players could read with only a firmware upgrade.

Though on that last point, I admit I do not know enough about the specifics of EVD to say that with certainty. Considering their stated goals, however, it seems almost guaranteed that they will try to remain as compatible as possible with existing DVD hardware.

Re:Predicting 0% marketshare for EVD

[SharpFang]

Time for you to find education - as opposed to propaganda.

I'm from "former eastern block" so I know how things are being managed in such places.

Those who refuse get a bullet in the head.

For refusing to get EVD? Are you really SO stupid that you believe that?

Things are very simple. People aren't -forced-. Things just get arranged in such a way, that if they want otherwise, it just doesn't pay - by far.
In communist countries, big monetary transactions are relatively scarce. You buy food, maybe clothes, maybe some small home equipment. People earn little, but these cost little too. No problem. But if you want luxury goods, they usually cost more than in the west. People just almost never can afford them. But there IS a "window" for them - special government coupons that allow you to purchase a luxury item from limited pool, for very decent price. You get those by communist means: "Everyone gets one", "Those who deserve get one" or by a bribe or friendship or such. The caveat is, the items are of exact specification. So an university may purchase in "internal export network" a CD drive for $50 or use a coupon for EVD for $10. A worker at a factory instead of getting a lousy $50 bonus for really superb job over several years, may get a coupon to buy a brand new, quite decent PC (conforming to government specs, from the pool) that will cost $80. Want to get DVD instead of the EVD inside? Pay $100 from your savings and enjoy! The system works quite well in promoting what the government wants. Of course, you have to be very lucky, or hard working... or have good contacts, to get such a coupon!

No Comment

[Catharz]

A spokesman for the Motion Picture Association of America did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

They probably had to get a couple of people in to help them off the floor after they fell out of their chair laughing.

How many 'standards'

[nurb432]

This is getting really stupid. How many 'standard' media formats can we handle?

It will all end up a big unuseable jumble if this trend isnt stopped...

While im not for 'one vendor' ideas, 'one standard' IS good.... ( oh, and make that standard open.. )

Solid state?

[SharpFang]

Or at least with minor moving parts like a tiny mirror or such?
IMHO following the "disk" trend is a mistake. CD and DVD could have been made i.e. rectangular, with drive that would just sweep the laser ray over immobile surface. Cheaper, faster, less error-prone... and less resembling a vinyl record, so Sony decided it should be round and rotate instead, so people would prefer to buy it.

I still hope some next generation media won't follow dumb marketing trends and prefer efficiency over "legacy looks", but it seems China failed my hopes this time.

Re:Solid state?

[srleffler]

I don't think this would work. (and I Am An Optical Engineer). If you wanted to scan the beam across a square area comparable to a CD by tilting the source, it would have to be pretty far from the media. Your square CD (call it a Compact Square: "CS") would have to be 3.75"x3.75" to have the same storage area as a CD. If we optimisticly assume the tilt mechanism can tilt the beam through a 120 degree arc the source would have to be 1" away from the CS in order to cover the whole area. That would make compact players more difficult to design. You end up with a lot of "wasted" air space above the CS.

Worse, the light would hit the media at an angle. The reflected beam from the surface would then bounce off at an equal angle (pointed away from the source). In order to pick up the reflected beam you would then have to do a 2D raster scan with the detector. Unless you are prepared to do that scan over an area twice as wide as the actual CS, the detector has to be closer to the surface than the source is. This can be worked out but you will lose some storage area in the middle of the surface due to the need to avoid having the detector block the beam from the source.

It's a lot simpler to mount the source and detector together such that the beams are perpendicular to the surface and the surface spins underneath. The technology for this is well established and mature so there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

China is 20% of the global market

[chmilar]

China, at 1.3 billion people, is 20% of the world's 6.4 billion.

That's enough to sustain their own format, and to attract interest from foreign media providers.

If India was to team up on the EVD, they'd have 35%!

Re:China is 20% of the global market

[orthancstone]

Having 1/5th of the world's population does not imply having 20% of the global market (think of money and who has it...not all of the 1.3 billion are in the market for buying this).

It's all about the money

[X-Mustang]

DVD player royalties is approximately US$5 to $10, depending if you are part of MPEG LA, 3C or 5C consortium. China manufacturers pump out more than 30 million DVD players a year, so imagine the massive outflow of cash to US companies holding the DVD patents.
EVD uses the same media format as DVD (ie. two 0.6mm polycarbonate discs with reflective layers read out using a coherent light source), so they still have to pay royalties to Time-Warner, Philips, Sony, Matsushita, Thomson-RCA, Toshiba etc for the disc patents.

Re:It's all about the money

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they are covered by the cdrom patents which run out soon or have already run out

Re:Who is this really going to help ?

[kfg]

Yeah, the domestic Chinese market is only 1/4 the world market, or 4 times larger than the American domestic market.

How on earth do they expect this to fly with a highly patriotic and semi captive market of only a billion or so people?

It's madness.

And certainly no one here on Slashdot would feel inclined to adopt the standard if the Chinese choose to make it competitive by releasing it as an open standard ala the CD.

We just love attempts to "DVDize" the Compact Disc.

What would be wrong about taking the format out of the hands of the MPAA and DVD Consortium? Just the fact that it comes from China?

Like the compass, silk, lacquer, gunpowder and noodles?

A good idea is a good idea. I think an open video format is a good idea. If that's what the Chinese are up to I'll go at least one round of The East is Red with them.

KFG

On avoiding paying American royalties fees

[Pac]

just to avoid paying American royalty fees

Let me try to explain it here. Avoiding paying royaties to US and EU is a major component of any sensible comercial or industrial policy in a developing country. in market the size of China's any cent not leaving the country is a cent to be invested in a million of important things to the Chinese population.

Incidentally that is also one of the major reasons for countries like Brazil, India and China to be seriously looking at Open/Free Software - in the medium and long term, the savings in royalties not send abroad usually justify any short-term problems that may arise.

Re:On avoiding paying American royalties fees

[Goldsmith]

Oddly enough, you forgot to mention Japanese liscensing fees. It just so happens that it is to Japanese companies that one must pay DVD liscensing to, not American nor European.

Re:On avoiding paying American royalties fees

[michael_cain]

Avoiding paying royaties to US and EU is a major component of any sensible comercial or industrial policy in a developing country.

Just out of curiousity, what do the licensing fees run per DVD player? I can buy a bottom-end player for less than $40 at Circuit City or Best Buy. That has to cover the cost of the original manufacture in the Far East, shipping to the US West Coast, transport to Denver, and the fixed costs of the retailer (floor space, etc). I'm guessing the licensing fee is $1, $2? What will it cost China to develop a complete standard that does not infringe on any of the international patents -- $10M? $100M? I know China is a potentially large market, but that's a lot of sales. I suspect that there are more political motives afoot.

Video Codec Appears To Be VP5 & VP6

[Effugas]

I looked into this a bit. Apparently Chinese manufacturers are starting to balk at the ~$350M going out to Japanese DVD patent holders, and the government is listening.

Remember -- fifty years ago, Japan tried to colonize Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia is still pissed.

Anyway, the video codec appears to be On2's VP5 and VP6 -- which, being much newer codecs than MPEG-2, support HDTV resolutions and DVD bitrates -- supposedly with quality as good, if not better, than Microsoft's solution. (Caveat: I was not impressed with VP3, the algorithm open sources by On2 and being tweaked heavily into Ogg Theora.) Not said is what's being used for the audio codec. While audio compression and video compression are two very different things, it's problematic when the two are grown utterly separate from one another. DVD has this problem -- MPEG-2 and AC3 (Dolby Digital) have slightly different frame sizes, making it much more awkward to edit accurately.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

Finally!

[Carnivorous Carrot]

Finally! Something we can crack and pirate stuff from them!

I can tell you this....

[rabtech]

If China wants to make DVD players, TVs, and so on that don't try to strip my fair use rights away from me in some vain and nebulous "fight the pirates" scheme, I'm all for it.

Hollywood and their bullshit can go jump in a lake.

An Extreme Yo-Yo By Any Other Name...

[l33t mn!ml]

Hey at least they had the taste not to call it "XVD".

Re:VCD?

[sneakcjj]

as the CFO of my company put it, china needs to wake up if they want to play with the big boys in the global economy.

The US needs to wake up. China can do whatever it wants. All large companies (and thus US trade policy) will bend to China's every will because they can not survive without China's market.

China does not want to depend on any foreign nation for anything. By developing their own technologies, they are creating jobs for China's population which encourages them to get a better education. Not having to depend on anyone will allow them to pass the US in terms of economic power.

EVD is just a step in that process. To us, it will mean a cheaper media type that will most likely be better than DVD. Hollywood may not catch on, but for home use and personal recording EVD will most likely be a hit because it will be cheaper than DVD. As far as buying extra equipment, I can't imagine China would not build in DVD compatibility with their players/recorders.

America wants it cheap and China gives it to us.

Bravo

[bigberk]

Only in Asian countries, where there is true technological freedom, can one hope to innovate to such a degree and blow open a new market. It is too bad that the US and EU, in their anti-innovation and pro-corporate protection mindset, is closed to new ideas.

Oh dear :/

[Cloud K]

Am I being thick, or does this mean a possibility of a scenario where a reader/burner is:

DVD, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, EVD, EVD-R, EVD-RW, EVD+R, EVD+RW?

Unlikely perhaps, but not impossible. Fragmentation of a so-called 'standard' is a bad thing IMO :(

Try getting salesmen at PC World (UK) to try and explain *that* drive!

Article Typo

[bsDaemon]

real project name PDVD -- People's Democratic Video Disk
*duck*

EVD sounds superior

[zymano]

EVD can display hdtv which dvd can not. The picture quality is 5 times better !

I think this is a good thing. If Hollywood doesn't support it then maybe independents producers might. A HDTV recordable version using blue lasers would be very cool.

Re:EVD sounds superior

[Grishnakh]

This sounds like it might end up causing yet another technology rift between the US and Asia, with Asia having better stuff.

Back in the days before DVD, all we had here in the "advanced" US was VHS. Terrible resolution (much worse than even NTSC is capable of displaying), tape instead of disc, etc. Asia, OTOH, had the VCD, and later the SCVD. But Hollywood didn't like VCD so it never happened here.

Now, if my prediction is right, we Americans will be stuck with crappy DVD, with region coding, commercials you can't skip, resolution only a little better than NTSC, and patent fees, while Asia will have a format that has HDTV resolution, no region coding, no non-skippable commercials and FBI warnings, and a lower price tag. Since Hollywood won't release movies in it, we won't have it here. Again, we'll be the ones in a the tech backwater.

bah

[ShadowRage]

let them have their own technology.

seriously, how much influence on the world does china have except manufacturing 99 cent children's toys and other low budget items?

We dont have to use EVD's.. if they want to use them fine, let them. It's not like they mass produce movies for the whole like, say, the US does?

this is just a response to how many people are going on about how china's going to disrupt the international dvd format, etc.. we necessarily dont have to apply to their standards, it's mainly for their own nation and to those nations who find it useful.

I'm fine using VHS still. VHS doesnt jam up if it has a scratch in it (though it can jam up if you have a badly manufactured tape, but I've run into that like, once.)
dvd's are an alternative IMHO. they're around to try to prevent piracy (yeah, that really worked well)

just my two cents on the situation, I dont see why people here are threatened by this.

Re:China- -

[justin_speers]

This will die a horrible death. Given time, China will die a horrible death. Communism doesn't work, free-market capitalism does. This is just yet another of the millions of signs that China's so-called "Democratic capitalist reforms" are a joke.

It's impossible to fund communism in the long run, and to those saying this is a good thing because it's "free" are demonstrating a really ridiculous ignorance of the basics of economics. This isn't free, the Government gets their money from somewhere (citizens). And with no profit incentive, the cost of the product will never go down, and the system will fold.

No, I'm sorry, it's even worse

[Xeger]

Because of technical peculiarities, the EVD format will not support the proper R/RW profiles for recordable versions of the media. Under pressure from the Motion Picture Association of America, China has announced that it will only support EVD-W and EVD+W formats.

The difference between R, RW and W is that with R and RW you can Record and ReWrite the disc, respectively. But with an EVD-W disc you can ONLY write to the disc. Once the disc has been written, you can never read from it again.

Copy protection, hell. You can't copy what you can't read!

Fractals the Grassy Knoll of compression

[benwaggoner]

Er, sounds good, but you actually don't really know what you're talking about.

A well encoded DVD has very high quality, certainly on par with Betacam SP, the high end analog broadcast production format before digital took over. A well encoded disc won't show significant artifacts.

HDTV resolution goes up to 1920x1080, which is about 6.5x the pixels of DVD (720x480). How high do you want to go? The cheapest displays that can meaningfully do more than 1920 lines wide on a largish screen are awesomely expensive.

Today's displays are crappy? Compared to what? A tapestry? IMAX? We're really at the beginning of a golden age for consumer video technologies. The quality you can buy for $5000 is vastly improved in the last three years, let alone the last 30. Most people don't have eyes good enough to appreciate anything beyond a good 1920x1080.

Lastly, fractals are really the Grassy Knoll of video compression. Yes, Iterated was created to make products on them. No, fractals didn't work. I spent a lot of the mid-late 90's working with Iterated's stuff in different forms. Bitrate scalability was interesting (you could truncate the file at any point, and the more bits you grabbed, the better an image you got). Compression ratios were somewhat better than JPEG. They scaled pretty well. But the net gains were too small to overcome the market share advantages of lowly JPEG.

Iterated simply couldn't make a business around fractal compression. They sold their stuff to AltaMira, who still are selling their fractal compression stuff. Iterated morphed into a company providing image management solutions for the prepress industry. There was still some fractalish stuff underneath, but that wasn't where the value was really added.

The big thing about "fractal" compression is that it wasn't really fractal - its ability to take advantage of self-symmetry was very limited. Heck, even with today's computer power, a "true" fully automatic fractal compressor would take unbelievable amounts of CPU power - many orders of magnitude beyond what realistic video codecs do today. You're basically extending motion search into so many axes.

The only fractal video codec was ClearVideo, which was interesting I suppose, but was roundly stomped by both DCT H.263 derived codecs, and VQ derived codecs like Sorenson Video 1.

Almost everything good about fractals has been inherited by wavelets. And wavelets have also inherited fractal's difficulty in handling motion estimation. That's why DCT and DCT-derived codecs still rule the roost today. Wavelets are great for still image, but no one has come close to devising a really competitive wavelet motion codec.

Maybe someday we'll have a revolution in codecs, but DCT-based codecs like WMV9 and AVC keep on trucking in providing excellent compression efficiency, scalability, and decoder performance.

Re:VCD?

[geekoid]

"as the CFO of my company put it, china needs to wake up if they want to play with the big boys in the global economy."

your CFO is an idioty and doesn't understand China's policy at long term stratagy. pretty scary for a CFO.

Why should China play with 'the Big boys'?
'The Big Boys' are pissing off a lot of the people that buy there goods. If china comes up with a format that DVD manufatures can play, and is cheaper to press, and it gives consumers what they want, then they will win.
Keep in mind, China has longterm goals in mind, while 'The Big Boys' are having a problem seeing past the next quarter.

'The Big Boys' had better start thinking long term, put money into things that are required for a good foundation for there respective countries, and stop pissing people off. Otherwise they will loose.

Questionable history!

[benwaggoner]

Eh?

First off, VCD isn't really any better quality wise than VHS. VCD is digital, so you don't get analog errors and wear, but it has only half the temporal and vertical resolution.

VCD didn't fail in the states for any reason other than that it didn't provide any better customer value than VHS. VCD won in Asia since it's a cheaper medium to counterfeit. In general, Asian audiences also seem more willing than US audiences to accept lower quality for lower price for video. Have you looked at many of those audience-shot Hong Kong bootlegs? Awful.

DVD is way better than VHS, and so won in the US.

And the DVD Forum is hard at work on a next generation HD DVD standard, and US companies are part of the Forum.

China might be trying an end run around this format, but the US-Japan-Europe industry axis will have their own format coming.

A guess at what China is trying to do...

[cabalamat2]

China wants to manufacture DVD players, without having to pay $17 for every one it manufactures. So they invent their own system, EVD, which is similar to DVD but uses completely different file formats, video/audio encoding algorithms, etc, so no-one can complain they're infringing patents. Maybe they also have a capability to interface with a computer, for data transfer. They then get loads of films released in EVD format - this'll mostly be Chinese-language films for the China and Taiwan markets. (There might be films for other Asian markets: Japan, Korea, India, etc). Maybe there will be some USA or European films as well.

The main people buying EVD players will be in Asia, and diaspora Asian communities in Europe and the USA. The DVD manufacturers can't complain, since it isn't infringing their IP. Nor can Holywood. Then, as if from nowhere, REOM images appear on the Internet that when downloaded and put into an EVD player, make it able to play DVDs. Of course, the EVD manufacturers make public noises about how naughty it is to download these ROM images, and illegally play DVDs...

...but at the end of the day, they've managed to make DVD players without paying the $17 a go license fee, and not only that they are better than official DVD players: they are all-region, allow you to skip adverts, and play EVDs as well. The MPAA have a fit and issue lawsuits right, left and center, but by the time the suits are all settled, EVD has massive market share (at least in Asia), and even if illegal to sell in Europe and the USA, there are loads of players being smuggled in.

I've no idea how accurate this scenario is, it's just a guess.

EVD mainly for Chinese market

[taweili]

China's domestic A/V markets is estimated to be US$20 billions this year but, in reality, it's only $2 billions due to the pirating. Fighting pirating is difficult in China while pirated CD sales are providing the mean to feed large group of people in a country with 250M unemployed.

Realizing cracking down the pirating is not possible in short term, the large medias companies such as Disney has been pricing their products closed to the pirated copies. A legit Disney DVD costs about $3 while the pirated costs about $1.

Waving out the royalty fee for DVD would help the media companies to close the cost gap between legit copies and pirated copies.

Moreover, Chinese manufecture about 50% or more of DVD players for export. They haven't complaining about paying royalty on that but they want EVD to be used domestically to avoid paying DVD royalty for domestic market.

In other news...

[iamhassi]

China to create own air
Posted by icup

In a move to fight anything promoted by the West, China has revealed plans to create it's own air.

"Western air is just too... western" says Director of Foreign Affairs Kim Woo. "Chinese air should have a more traditional feeling to it."

Kim Woo continues "China has more people any any other country, we can do whatever we want without taking orders from Western influence, including making Chinese air."

"I like the idea," said one Chinese citizen, "I live in China, so I should breath Chinese air, right?"

Although no details have been revealed about the distribution system of the new Chinese air, inside sources say it will be bottled like water and priced at roughly $1 USD per quart. Bottling is likely to take place in the US.

Plans are also in the works for Chinese water.

Re:Who is this really going to help ?

[meadowsp]

Everyone who is American thinks money is worth more than bodies.