[6.5] What's new with DVD technology? November 2003

On November 19th the DVD Forum steering committee finally approved the blue-laser HD-DVD standard for continued work.

The Chinese government announced that EVD (enhanced versatile disc) would be launched for Christmas 2003. EVD is a "homegrown" alternative to DVD technologies developed by the DVD Forum and CE companies in Japan. EVD uses its own optical disc format and a proprietary video compression technology (VP5 and VP6, developed by On2 in the U.S.). EVD supports HD resolutions up to 1920x1080. EVDs will not play in standard DVD players, and it's possible that many EVD players will not play DVDs since part of the reason for developing the format was to get away from paying royalties on DVD technologies. EVD players in China will cost about $250, compared to about $80 for a DVD player. It remains to be seen if EVD will succeed in China and if it will appear in any other countries.

The DVD Forum steering committee once again failed to approve the AOD format (now being called HD-DVD by proponents in the DVD Forum). Some people in the industry, including Warren Lieberfarb, formerly at Warner and responsible for much of the success of DVD, began talking about sticking with existing red-laser DVD for high-definition video, using advanced codecs such as H.264 or Microsoft WM9. A number press articles incorrectly reported that the DVD Forum was abandoning blue-laser HD technology.

There are rumors that there's a 6th HD format in the works based on the +RW format.

In the June meeting of the DVD Forum Steering Committee, the vote to officially approve work on the next-generation DVD format (AOD, see below) did not pass. This does not mean that the format was voted down, as reported elsewhere, only that the proposal as currently defined was not approved. There was clear bias in the voting, since the members that voted no or abstained were all participants in the competing Blu-ray group. There will be another vote on a modified proposal in mid September. In the meantime, work continues inside and outside the DVD Forum on next-generation DVD.

There are now at least 5 candidates for high-definition DVD. (See 3.13 for details).

1. HD-DVD-9 (aka HD-9).
2. Advanced Optical Disc (AOD).
3. Blu-ray (BD).
4. Advanced Optical Storage Research Alliance (AOSRA), Blue-HD-DVD-1.
5. AOSRA Blue-DVD-DVD-2.

Philips demonstrated a blue-laser miniature pre-recorded optical disc. The 3-cm (1.2-inch) disc holds 1 Gbyte of data. The prototype drive to read the disc measured 5.6 x 3.4 x 0.75 cm (2.2 x 1.3 x 0.3 inches).

A group of 9 companies announced February 19th a new high-density recordable DVD standard, known as Blu-ray. At the DVD Forum general meeting in March, the Forum announced that it will investigate next-generation standards to choose the best one. Since the 9 companies are all members of the DVD Forum, it's likely that Blu-ray will eventually be approved by the Forum.

Also at the March meeting the Forum announced that according to AOL Time Warner's request it will work on a standard for putting high-definition video on existing DVDs. The format is being called "HD-DVD-9." See 3.13.