Taiwans FVD players to hit the market this month

November 4, 2004

GristyMcFisty used our news submit to tell us this bit of news this
morning. DigiTimes is reporting that Taiwans
red laser, Forward Versatile Disc, has won support from Chinas Optical drive
manufacturers. Furthermore, these new FVD players will hit the streets there by months end!

In
addition, the FVD format has adopted Microsoft's WMV9 and WMA9 compression
algorithms, which have lower royalty charges of US$0.10 than the US$2.50
charged for MPEG-2 compression, or US$0.25 charged for MPEG-4 or H.264
compression, Huang indicated.

The soon-to-be-launched first-generation FVD
discs will have a storage capacity of 5.4-6GB for single-sided discs and
9.8-11GB for double-sided discs and will support resolutions of up to
1280é—720, Huang said. Second-generation FVD discs will have a capacity of
15-16GB and support resolutions up to 1920é—1080i, Huang
noted.

FVD players will be sold at a tentative
retail price of about NT$5,000 (US$149) in Taiwan and about 1,000 yuan
(US$121) in China. FVD has also attracted the support of Taiwan providers
of digital content and several movie publishers in China, Huang
indicated.

The Industrial Technology Research Institute
or (ITRI), is a research body backed by Taiwan's government. FVD or
(Forward Versatile Disc) was a joint effort by ITRI's Optoelectronics
and Systems Laboratories and the Advanced Optical Storage Research Association,
a group organized by ITRI that includes 29 Taiwanese companies.

You may visit the ITRI
page here if you wish. They have an interesting self description of "A
national level R&D organization for applied research in industrial
technology."

Source: DigiTimes