Petteri Pyyny
12 Jan 2005 13:05
As western consumer electronic companies, most notably Philips continue their efforts to crack down on Chinese DVD player manufacturers who try to escape from paying royalties for DVD technology, several Chinese and Taiwanese DVD player manufacturers might drop their support for DVD in favor of their own homegrown video format, FVD (Forward Versatile Disc).
The format, which was developed by Taiwanese electronic companies, supported by Taiwan's government, was launched in last year's April and provides slightly higher storage space than the current DVD-Video format, but still uses red laser rather than blue laser (what the "next generation" optical formats, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, use).
If FVD's support grows in China, it might provide interesting shockwaves throughout the western world as well, as most cheap DVD players are built by Chinese manufacturers and even if their players aimed for western markets would include support for DVD-Video, it seems likely that they'd include a support for FVD as well. First FVD-capable players will launch in Taiwan and China at the end of this month, followed by India, Australia and other Asia-Pacific. Europe and U.S. will get their first FVD players in second half of 2005. The format, obviously, doesn't use DVD discs, DVD structure or anything that has been patented by the DVD Forum member companies.
Source: DigiTimes