[photopress:evd.jpg,full,alignright]One of the problems for all Chinese manufacturers in the electronics industry is that royalties have to be paid on so much. And royalties push up prices, cut down profits. So members of China’s EVD (enhanced versatile disc) Industry Alliance will stop making DVD players from 2008. Instead they will make EVD players. Zhang Baoquan, secretary-general of the EVD Industry Alliance, said it is all being fast-tracked. As it should be.
The figures are amazing. China’s DVD player output once accounted for 90 percent of the world total, but high patent fees hampered its development. So a number of DVD player producers dropped out of the business. Switch to EVD and the patent problem practically disappears.
So how much is involved?
Chinese makers must pay the patent licensing alliance of Hitachi, Matsushita, Toshiba, JVC, Mitsubishi and Time Warner about $5 for each DVD player produced which shrinks profit margins to invisibility. The EVD standard is one to which most of the intellectual property rights, includes sound, navigation systems and copyright protection technologies are held within China.
China’s Ministry of Information Industry last year adopted the EVD technology as the national standard for its electronics industry. Beijing E-World Technology, a company jointly funded by nine mainland electronics makers, started to develop the EVD standard.
The standard is set as a guideline for the development and production of chips, software, discs and players for high-definition digital video products.
Leading Chinese disc player producers, including Bubukao, Changhong and Skyworth, will display more than 50 EVD models next week. Chinese makers will set the average sale price of EVD players at RMB700 ($87.5) which is roughly the same as a DVD player.
It is claimed — and this is seriously important — that the image quality of an EVD player is five times clearer than that of a DVD player and the discs can store more data.
What makes it compelling is that owners can play their existing DVD collections on 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. It would cost RMB5-8 ($1) to copy a movie.
What will be amazing is if this takes off — no reason why it should not except for the entrenched opposition of the rest of the industry — overseas.
Source: Xinhua