China moves a step closer to making EVD players a reality

November 19, 2003

China, producer of 60 to 70 percent of all DVD players, unveiled their technology platform Tuesday that could transform them from a manufacturing drone to an audio visual entertainment innovator. Exporting over 20 million players in 2002. The government has backed a percentage of R&D to wean the nation off the DVD royalty that is bleeding profits.

Beijing E-world Technology Co Ltd, the corporate entity of a government-backed consortium of businessmen and academics, and two DVD manufacturers unveiled the indigenous, higher-definition Enhanced Versatile Disc.

"It's not a question of whether we walk the EVD path. It's a question of how fast or slow we go," Hao Chieh, president of E-world Technology which designed the new standard, told Reuters.

The government contributed 10 million yuan, or one quarter of R&D costs, in 1999 after nine electronic giants, including Sony Corp and Toshiba Corp, pressured Chinese DVD makers to pay $ 9 in retroactive royalties for each player exported.

"The DVD dispute makes our enterprises truly understand the implications of possessing our own intellectual property rights," Vice Minister of Information Industry Lou Qinjian said at the unveiling ceremony.

The consortium charges 500,000 yuan in licensing fees and $ 2 in royalties for each player manufactured.

In a related story, Coding Technologies announced a joint venture with with Beijing E-World Technology, to create and license a new audio codec, SBR-enhanced EAC. The EAC codec supports mono, stereo, and 5.1 surround-sound modes for encoding and decoding. SBR is a bandwidth-extension technique, which enables audio codecs to deliver the same quality at half the bit rate. In addition, it is now known that LSI Logic has joined the EVD effort providing high definition (HD) encoding and decoding technologies (based on the DoMiNo(TM) architecture). Couple that with On2 Technologies VP5 and VP6 video compression algorithm and you are looking at a new interesting situation.

On the other hand, naysayers think the DVD is here to stay for a while. They believe in order to become accepted worldwide, EVD will need the driving force of Hollywood's movie machine to make it a formidable foe to the present market. They need those films released in this new format. Another thing, so many DVD players are out there the new player must be backward compatible. Finally, the EVD player is expensive as compared to DVD players, about $ 230 dollars US, well over twice the current cost of DVD players. So who knows what will come of this exciting new venture. China is on the move in many ways, who knew they would be the third nation to be orbiting the earth?

Thanks to GristyMcfisty by the way, for contributing to this story in the news submit!

Source: story.news.yahoo.com