China unveils fleet of 'HD DVD killer' players
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EVD exports to begin next year Chinese consumer electronics companies yesterday kicked off a second attempt to establish the country's alternative to DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc as the nation's favourite format. Called Enhanced Versatile Disc (EVD), is essentially a DVD that uses a more efficient content compression system.â¦
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Hard-drive based multimedia player will be available later this year.
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Toshiba's second generation of HD DVD players will feature a trimmer look and new remote-control features.
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NEC, Toshiba will put the next-generation DVD technology in desktops and laptops next year. NEC plans to start selling desktop PCs equipped with HD-DVD (High Definition/High Density-DVD) drives at the end of 2005, the company says.
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(InfoWorld) - Electronics manufacturers in China may be gearing up for another attempt to establish a proprietary optical disc format, although some analysts said such a move is unlikely to succeed. The DVD player makers plan to switch to EVD (enhanced versatile disc) in an attempt to avoid paying patent royalties on the DVD format, according to published reports. The world's largest producers of DVD players, Chinese electronics companies would use the format instead of standards such as MPEG-4. Last week, 20 top manufacturers including Haier announced their plans to switch from DVD to EVD entirely by 2008, according to a report in China Economic News. Getting foreign entertainment companies to adopt the new standard would be an uphill battle, however. China has attempted to introduce its own standards before, including S-VCD (Super Video Compact Disc) in the mid-1990s, and its own advanced telecommunications standard, TD-SCDMA. Both faced foreign resistance and a lack of broad support even within China. The move is most likely an attempt at reducing the royalties, according to industry observers. Chinese DVD manufacturers first made a push with EVD in 2003, but months later no players had appeared on the market in China or abroad. Consumer acceptance of an entirely new format will be difficult in both China and overseas. "Unless Chinese DVD manufacturers are prepared to sacrifice the global market and the Chinese market to manufacturers in India and elsewhere, they cannot afford to make a wholesale shift to EVD production at this time," David Wolf, chief executive officer, Wolf Group Asia. "For that reason, it's unlikely to take place." Kristian Kender, editor of China Media Monitor, a Beijing-based industry publication, said: "It'll be pretty hard on a global scale, because the DVD format is so entrenched. On the other hand, they can make a good argument that it makes it much harder to pirate material." "It will be difficult for them to get international firms to come on board, but the Chinese DVD market is so huge on its own that even if this standard is not adopted outside of China, the home market is enough to support the rollout."
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Influx of low-power diodes should help bring down cost of next-gen optical disc players.
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Integrated video engine to offer DVD quality on a handheld
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Dual-layer disc to smooth hi-def format adoption
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The Japanese electronics giant threw in the towel on its HD DVD technology, announcing that it would no longer develop, produce or market disc players for the format.
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Reuters confirms Toshiba will cease manufacturing HD-DVD equipment, which leaves Blu-Ray as the presumptive victor in the irrelevant optical disk format war. Rob Beschizza reports in his Gadget Lab blog.
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As part of digital shift, electronics maker is planning device that will record HD DVDs, DVDs and CDs.
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Our countdown to next week's CES centers now on whether the CE industry will at last reach a solution to the DRM conundrum. The new trend toward DRM-free music doesn't appear to be shaking the Blu-ray and HD DVD folks, who continue to cling to proprietary disk formats. Will consumers seek a video alternative, and might it come from China?
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Watch out, Toshiba Samsung will launch its promised dual-format HD DVD/Blu-ray Disc player in Europe next month, the company has said, and industry insiders are already claiming the machine could be priced at just â¬400 ($548/Â£271).â¦
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Warner Bros.'s home video unit and  its Chinese partner on Thursday unveiled a new strategy to  fight DVD piracy in China by selling disks earlier, at lower  prices and in more stores than before with the backing of  government officials.
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Will the competing next-generation optical disc standards ever meet in the same device? Not for now, it seems.
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Toshiba claimed yesterday to have developed the first DVD that is capable of playing both conventional and high-definition content, in the latest move in the race for the next generation of optical discs.
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Bringing next-gen DVD goodness into the Europe's living rooms Review While other manufacturers flap about trying to decide what format to back in the HD DVD/Blu-ray Disc war, Toshiba has been solidly behind HD DVD since the start. The HD-E1 is the first consumer-oriented standalone HD DVD player available in Europe, so you can now feed your HD telly something decent.â¦