Seeking to compete on its own terms in the lucrative entertainment industry, China has announced a government-funded project to promote an alternative to DVDs and "attack the market share" of the global video format.
The rollout Tuesday of the project, known as EVD, or enhanced versatile disc, was timed to coincide with the beginning of what China calls the "golden sales" period -- known elsewhere as the Christmas shopping season.
EVD would give Chinese manufacturers and technology consortiums a homegrown platform to sell and build on. It also is aimed at relieving Chinese DVD producers from paying licensing fees to companies that hold patents to the DVD format.
It was not immediately clear if any elements of EVD would help China battle the intellectual-property theft it has been promising to eradicate since joining the WTO in 2001.
Nor did the Chinese government say whether it had contacted major film producers about eventually releasing their movies on EVD. That would be a pivotal factor in any new format's success.
Development of the new, high-definition compression format has been sponsored by China's State Trade and Economic Commission.
Research on EVD began in 1999. It was developed by a company called Beijing E-World Technology Co Ltd using video-compression technologies licensed by On2 Technologies, an American company.
EVD's international impact could be huge, because China makes about 60 percent of the world's DVD players, said Vamsi Sistla, senior analyst with Allied Business Intelligence, a New York-based research firm.
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