[photopress:ChineseDVD_1.jpg,full,alignright]The DVD Forum has released a preliminary format for a HD DVD-ROM specification that is for China only.
Chinese organizations, including the Optical Memory National Engineering Research Center and China Electronics Technology Group, requested that the DVD Forum compile a Chinese version of the HD DVD-ROM format. The forum’s Working Group 11 for Blue-Laser DVD has been working on the format since early this year.
Physical specifications are mainly the same — only the modulation codec differs. For the HD DVD family, ETM (8 data bit/12 channel bit modulation) is used, but the China-only version employs FSM (4 data bit/6 channel bit modulation) codec.
The Chinese groups apparently sought a different codec to isolate the Chinese version from the HD DVD format used elsewhere. The working group confirmed that ETM and FSM exhibit almost the same frequency characteristics.
Based on the physical format, the Chinese group plans to define a proprietary video format. The format is scheduled to be completed by December and will be labeled: ‘HD DVD-ROM part1 Ver 10.0 for China only.’
Source: EE Times