China goes HD-DVD exclusive (sort of)

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EvaUnit02
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China goes HD-DVD exclusive (sort of)

Post by EvaUnit02 »

http://www.n4g.com/industrynews/News-66305.aspx

Breaking news: a new unexpected development coming out of China is shedding light on the reason that might have prompted Paramount and Dreamworks to jump ship and abort its support for Blu-ray. On September 7th, 2007, China officially dropped the bomb on the HD format war:

A consortium of Chinese university engineers and globally recognized manufacturers, in cooperation with the China High Definition DVD Industry Association (CHDA) and backed by the Chinese government, have reached an agreement on a standard specification for a blue-laser, hi-def disc, (note: not Blu-ray,) which is based on and fundamentally compatible with HD DVD with only minor adjustments, which will utilize the Advanced Audio Video Encoding Standard in Information Technology (AVS) codec developed by the Chinese government.

The newly standardized Chinese HD format is called "CH DVD", and is compatible with HD DVD. As China begins to roll out and adopt its own new "CH-DVD" players for the home market, China can also produce HD-DVD players for the rest of the world, at prices that can best be described as, "Chinese." For the embattled HD DVD, this dramatic turn of event has cemented its place and secured its future in China.

Updates:

The new "CH DVD" format was developed by the Optical Memory National Engineering Research Centre, an optical disc lab at Tsinghua University, in collaboration with the DVD Forum, developers of the HD-DVD format.
This new HD DVD-based format was co-developed and is officially endorsed and supported by the Chinese government.

The physical format of CH DVD is based on HD DVD and will have similar storage specifications, but the new format includes Chinese-owned intellectual property such as advanced copy protection technology as the Chinese government attempts to curb rampant piracy and control information in the country.

HD DVD and CH DVD are compatible, which means HD DVD players - with the proper software (AVS codec) - can read CH DVD, and vice versa.
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bradavon
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Post by bradavon »

So it's HD-DVD but extra Chinese owned Copy protection which will fail. No doubt they're doing this to keep control of the royalties.

It sounds like it will be the discs not hardware that will be different. I hope it really is 100% compatible. I wonder if this means we'll start to see HK studios use it or stick with Blu-ray.

Thanks Eva

p.s - This belongs in Technology really.
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bradavon
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Post by bradavon »

HD-VMD has also just been released too:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,13697 ... ticle.html

The spec is pretty impressive considering it uses a red laser:

"HD VMD discs, which hold up to 30GB on a single side, are encoded with a maximum bit rate of 40 megabits per second... between HD DVD's 36 Mpbs and Blu-ray's 48 Mbps. The format uses MPEG-2 and VC1 video formats to encode at 1080p resolution for the time being, and will possibly move to the H.264 format in the future."

But ultimately it's completely pointless and will definitely without doubt fail!
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Post by tom2681 »

Great news for HD-DVD.
I had been waiting for them to announce this.

This should greatly increase HD-DVD's lead in the format war.
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