China to Get its Own Specific HD DVD Format

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Following requests by China's government-sponsored Optical Memory National Engineering Research Centre (OMNERC) and the state-run China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), China will get a HD DVD-ROM format designed specifically to be incompatible with the global HD DVD standard. The DVD Forum announced at a Japanese conference in that it is now planning to work on this blue laser HD DVD variant for the Chinese market.

The purpose of this format is to fight the huge on-going piracy of optical discs as well as produce a less expensive version of the HD DVD format that will not result in its cheaper players and discs being marketed outside of China. To make the Chinese HD DVD disc incompatible with the global standard, only the modulation scheme will be changed, where the Chinese version will use FSM (Four to Six Modulation), unlike the global HD DVD standard that uses ETM (Eight to Twelve modulation). This Chinese version is expected to be finished in December.

View: Neowin BPN forum discussion

News source: CDFreaks.com

News source: DigiTimes Systems

#1 Xerxes on 12 Oct 2006 - 11:31

Interesting idea, be interesting to see if it has any affect on the piracy problem there.

#2 nekrosoft13 on 12 Oct 2006 - 11:38

i would say no, people will simply avoid that format, and still download from the web

#3 HawkMan on 12 Oct 2006 - 11:57

Doesn't this mean that china will only get HD-DVD(china version) and if so doesn't the fact that the worlds largest growing consumer market will get only HD-DVD mean a rather good boost for HD-DVD. sure it's incompatible withthe rest of the world and all that, but outside of the modulation everythgin else on the disk is done the same way. And while there's aren't that large difference between HD-DVD and BD, there's still some work that has to be done double for those formats. Studios would probably want to save the money doing stuff twice, and then this would give HD-DVD a bit of an edge.

(3 replies) #4 KzR on 12 Oct 2006 - 12:05

With China's support for HD-DVD, Blu-Ray is going to have a tough time.

#4.1 McG on 12 Oct 2006 - 12:13

Good point.

#4.2 PeterTHX on 12 Oct 2006 - 16:20

Why?

VCD was the biggest in China. Was it big in the US and Europe? NO.

#4.3 Osprey on 12 Oct 2006 - 21:40

Quote - PeterTHX said @ #4.2

VCD was the biggest in China. Was it big in the US and Europe? NO.

VCD isn't a physical format. It's just a convention for putting an MPEG1 file on a CD-ROM. There's a huge difference. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are competing physical formats.

(1 reply) #5 DodgeViper on 12 Oct 2006 - 12:10

I don't see this working simply because there will be HD-DVD players that will let you play all formats, although this won't happen until the players get dirt cheap like DVD players.

#5.1 Peter McGrath on 12 Oct 2006 - 12:54

[checks if its April 1st] - no, ok

Exactly - China will make a fortune exporting cheap "multi format" players same as most DVD players today from China have an option for "region free" (if they even bother to enable region locking).

This is just another stupid idea by the movie companies to reduce competition and like all the other ones before will fail miserably.

(2 replies) #6 norky on 12 Oct 2006 - 15:19

Har har at the request of the Chinese government. This isn't to combat piracy, it's just another way for the Chinese government to control what the masses are exposed to.

#6.1 excalpius on 12 Oct 2006 - 17:26

agreed

#6.2 MrCobra on 13 Oct 2006 - 03:40

+1

Stupid communists.

#7 Buttus on 12 Oct 2006 - 16:18

well, that's one way to make it tougher to get around region coding....

#8 ThePitt on 12 Oct 2006 - 17:11

china wanna get hollywood in their hands. I wonder if they would be succeed

#9 DemonicHawk on 13 Oct 2006 - 02:36

yay for China :p

(1 reply) #10 CrazyDelta on 14 Oct 2006 - 13:55

One word - Pointless

#10.1 lylesback2 on 17 Oct 2006 - 01:17

agreed. i don't see the point behind this.. china will just make pirated copies of there own disc. you can already buy copies of burned DVD's from China on ebay, that are NTSC and PAL.

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