China’s Homegrown Digital Media Standards; End Of Piracy?

• Posted: Friday, December 08, 2006
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• Author: pradhana
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• Filed under: Digital Content

by Rafat Ali - PaidContent

China has come out with another home-grown digital media standard, this time for the DVD, the general idea being that with these local standards, Chinese players won’t have to pay royalities to foreign companies on their standards. Areas where China has acted include Wi-Fi, CDMA mobile phone equipment, mobile TV distribution and now DVDs. For DVD, its EVD, or “Extended Versatile Disc” standard is being revived again, after a failed effort a few years ago.

Chinese electronics makers have revived the campaign on a massive scale, saying they plan to switch completely to EVD by 2008 and stop producing DVD players. Electronics makers, film studios and retailers are promising to sell EVD discs and players. HD DVD, Blu-Ray and now this. Promoters of EVD say it provides crisper pictures and sound, bigger recording capacity and better anti-piracy features than standard DVD.

William Moss on the CNET blog has a good point: Even if the government mandates EVD as the format for Chinese content, its success hinges upon China’s movie pirates. Either the pirates will need to support EVD, or they need to be stamped out so that legitimate content can rule China’s shelves. That remains true for other digital standards China is trying to promote.

Source: PaidContent

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