Kina setter HD-DVD som nasjonal standard.

[b-real]

China picks HD DVD variant as national standard.

If ever there were a time for either Blu-ray or HD DVD manufacturers to play a trump card, now may be the time, and this could be the one: A consortium of Chinese university engineers and government officials, in cooperation with a Chinese video standards group that includes globally recognized manufacturers, plus the DVD Forum, have come to an agreement on a standard specification for a blue-laser disc mechanism and format specifically for the Chinese market.

 

The new group will be called the China High Definition DVD Industry Association, or just CHDA, and this is not the last you will hear of it.

 

The agreement announced early this morning US time is critical, because up until now, China has been reluctant to participate in the high-definition video disc industry unless it had an opportunity to bring its own video encoding standard to bear: AVS, a codec which incorporates elements of MPEG-2, but is otherwise different from -- and some argue, better than -- other MPEG encoding standards and VC-1 in important respects.

 

Now, the DVD Forum's involvement has evidently made it possible for Chinese manufacturers to produce components that play blue-laser, high-def discs using the Chinese national standard, though which are fundamentally compatible with HD DVD with only minor adjustments.

 

The upshot here is this: The same country that has literally upset the LCD TV industry on its ear in just the last year alone, now has the specifications it needs to do the same with high-def video discs. While it makes so-called CH-DVD players for the home market (the name is subject to change, the new consortium says), China can also produce HD DVD players for the rest of the world, at prices that can best be described as Chinese.

 

All of a sudden, the incentive for studios such as Warner Bros. to call a halt to exploiting new disc technologies its own engineers had patented, and for Paramount to jump ship and abort its Blu-ray support, may be becoming clear.

 

This is hugely significant in the current HD DVD vs. Blu-ray format war, because it means anyone with a bit of cash can make their own HD DVD player.

Similar to how companies like Vizio buy LCD panels from Samsung and LG, put a bezel on them and sell them in Wal-mart for less, so too can some company come along, buy what is essentially ready-made HD DVD hardware from China, slap on the software and sell it in Wal-mart for less.

And China is guaranteed to make the hardware, because the same hardware is now part of their government-mandated national high-def disc standard (they just use different codecs and software DRM, and they call it CH-DVD).

By Christmas next year, look for a flood of sub-$100 HD DVD players lining the shelves of your local Wal-mart.

Unless the BDA has something similar up its sleeve, Blu-ray will never be able to match HD DVD on price, either of the players or of the discs. It couldn't even match HD DVD on price before this announcement.

 

 

HD DVD ftw

 

Har noen tanker om hvordan dette kommer til å føre til?

Endret 9. september 2007 av b-real

[Tandamram]

Du kan jo gjerne slenge en link til dette inn i Blu-ray vs HD DVD-tråden. Surfer på mobilen for øyeblikket, så får ikke gjort det selv.

[ATWindsor]

Jeg liker at de bare har sagt "dette er en nasjonal standard". Blir interessant å se hva dette fører med seg i praksis.

 

AtW

[Muffinman]

Jepp, veldig vanskelig å forutsi hva dette fører med seg. Det ville sannsynligvis vært enklere å spå om et større vestlig land hadde gjort dette.

 

Usikkerhetsmomenter:

 

- Vil BD bli "forbudt"? Vil det bli lagt restriksjoner for import/salg av formatet?

 

- Hvilket marked er det for hd-formatene i Kina?

 

- Har folk flest råd/behov for å investere i spillere?

 

- Er markedet for disse produktene stort nok i Kina til å kunne påvirke den pågående formatstriden?

Endret 9. september 2007 av Muffinman