Members of China's EVD (enhanced versatile disc) Industry
Alliance will stop making DVD players from 2008 in a bid to replace
the foreign DVD standard with homegrown technology on the domestic
market.
The EVD industry was on the fast track of development, said
Zhang Baoquan, secretary-general of the EVD Industry Alliance, on
Wednesday.
China's DVD player output once accounted for 90 percent of the
world total, but high patent fees hampered its development, with
the number of DVD player producers dropping to fewer than 150 in
2005.
High patent fees for DVD players prompted domestic companies to
switch to EVD technology.
Chinese makers must pay the patent licensing alliance of
Hitachi, Matsushita, Toshiba, JVC, Mitsubishi and Time Warner about
US$5 for each DVD player they produce, drastically shrinking profit
margins.
They are therefore eager to promote the EVD standard, to which
they hold most of the intellectual property rights, including
sound, navigation systems and copyright protection
technologies.
In order to ease the pressure from foreign DVD patent holders,
China's Ministry of Information Industry last year adopted the EVD
technology as the national standard for its electronics industry to
rival the digital versatile disk format.
Beijing E-World Technology, a company jointly funded by nine
mainland electronics makers, started to develop the EVD standard
following a dispute with overseas makers over patent fees for DVD
players.
The standard is set as a guideline for the development and
production of chips, software, discs and players for
high-definition digital video products, according to the ministry.
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Leading Chinese disc player producers, including Bubukao,
Changhong and Skyworth, will display more than 50 EVD models next
week, said Zhang, who is also chairman of Antaeus Group, a company
dedicated to promoting the new standard.
Chinese makers will set the average sale price of EVD players at
700 yuan (87.5 U.S. dollars), roughly the same as a DVD player,
Zhang said.
The image quality of an EVD player is reputedly five times
clearer than that of a DVD player. Also, the discs can store more
data.
Consumers could play their existing DVD collections on the EVD
players, and owners of EVD players and high-definition TV sets with
USB interface would be able to copy movies at special "EVD
stations", facilities in densely populated areas including stores,
subway stations and community centers, said Zhang.
It would cost five to eight yuan (US$1) to copy a movie, Zhang
said.
(Xinhua News Agency December 1, 2006)