Philips crackdown on DVD royalties issue may benefit FVD

January 15, 2005

GristyMcFisty used our news submit to tell us about an article he spotted over at DigiTimes that may put some pressure on Chinese Manufacturers to ante up on royalties if they want to produce a DVD drive. Whether this will be a catalyst to dump the DVD format and forge ahead with Forward Versatile Disc remains to be seen. The average consumer must be overwhelmed at this point with so many formats.

Philips Electronics has taken action to prevent DVD players made by Chinese makers who refuse to pay royalty fees, from being imported to the US and Europe, according to Der-ray Huang, deputy director of the Opto-Electronics Systems & Laboratories (OES) under the government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), the leader in developing the forward versatile disc (FVD) standard, a Taiwan-developed DVD standard.

This will likely be a favorable development for the FVD market, and should boost sales, Huang said. FVD is, however, completely different from DVD in physical format, and it is not subject to royalty charges for DVD patents, Huang emphasized. And since the FVD standard is compatible with the DVD format, Philips' crackdown may afford business opportunities for FVD players sold into China's main export markets for DVD players, Huang said.

The article goes on to say that FVD players will be launched in Taiwan and China at the end of this month. After that, India, Australia and other Asia-Pacific markets, and finally in the US and Europe in the second half of this year. In addition, The FVD players will be bundled with digital TVs, which is a very rapidly growing market, at least it is here in the United states.

Source: DigiTimes