China to Promote Own Alternative to DVDs, EVD 410
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.
ugh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not good enough (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
Predicting 0% marketshare for EVD (Score:4, Insightful)
How many 'standards' (Score:3, Insightful)
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.. )
Re:ugh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ugh (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
It's all about the money (Score:2, Insightful)
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:Not good enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who is this really going to help ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Predicting 0% marketshare for EVD (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
I can tell you this.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hollywood and their bullshit can go jump in a lake.
Re:Not good enough (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:China is 20% of the global market (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:VCD? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:China- - (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:It's all about the money (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not good enough (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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:VCD? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:ugh (Score:2, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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:On avoiding paying American royalties fees (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Horrywood (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
A guess at what China is trying to do... (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
I've no idea how accurate this scenario is, it's just a guess.
EVD mainly for Chinese market (Score:3, Insightful)
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.