China develops its own HD-DVD format

September 21, 2005

China is doing it again! After the more or less unsuccessful tries with its EVD is China now on the way to develop its own HD-DVD standard. The German website Heise online reported yesterday that the DVD Forum has given its approval to a feasibility study and that the development of adequate drives should finish next year.

The Chinese high definition standard is expected to use the so called Audio Video Coding Standard (EVS) instead of the usual H.264/AVS or VC-1 codecs. Optional is there planned to support MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and WMV-9. To save costs, the manufactures can decline the implementation of these codecs.

According to the website should the first players be available in 2007.

Resulting from the not necessary payments of licence fees when the AVS codec is used, the Chinese manufacturers can save up to US $ 1 billion, said Lu Da, alternate director from the Optical Memory National Engineering Research Center on the Tsinghua-University in Beijing in an interview. The other physical parameters of the HD-DVD, such as storage capacity, should remain unchanged.