News and Reviews....

DVD... New Standard ??? .......    May 2002

    We have been following a story that broke April 2001 about a new format standard in DVD proposed by China. It seems that the processing companies in China believe that they are paying too much in the way of royalties to Japan, America and Europe for the discs and players manufactured in their country. Their format now has a name and is called Advanced Versatile Disc (AVD). 

    Initially the concept was to market the new format within the Greater China region, including Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Some considered it bluster, a ploy by Chinese manufactures to cut a better deal on royalty payments to the DVD Forum. But now it seems that Taiwan has joined the consortium and adds greater substance to the threat.

    After several months of exploring the feasibility of AVD, 19 Taiwanese companies came together in April 2002 to start work on a next generation standard that would not use the format specified by the DVD Forum as a baseline technology. They hope to gain some patents in their compression methods but sources tell of extreme difficulties in doing so based on compression schemes dominated by U.S and Japanese companies.

    The Taiwan standard is being called Enhanced versatile Disc (EVD) and is basically compatible with China's AVD.

    The capacity potential is about 1 Gbyte higher than today's single sided, one and two layer DVDs. Current red laser technology will still be implemented.

    Below are licensing bodies, technology and Royalty / Licensing Fees. 

Licensing Body: 6C (Hitachi, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, AOL/Time Warner and JVC)

Technology:  DVD Format

Royalties/Fees: 4 Percent per DVD player or $4 whichever is greater

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Licensing Body: 3C (Philips, Sony and Pioneer)

Technology:  DVD Format

Royalties /Fees: 3.5% per player or $5, whichever is greater

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Licensing Body: MPEG-LA

Technology:  MPEG-2 Video

Royalties /Fees:$2.50 (reduced from $4 as of products sold 01/01/02. 

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Licensing Body: Dolby Laboratories

Technology:  Dolby Digital audio

Royalties /Fees: NA

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Licensing Body: Macrovision

Technology:  Macrovision copy protection system

Royalties /Fees: NA

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Licensing Body: DVD Copy Control Association

Technology:  Content Scramble System (CSS)

Royalties /Fees: No royalties, but licensees must pay annual admin. fee

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Licensing Body: Thomson / DiscoVision

Technology: Patents in optical disk area 

Royalties /Fees: NA

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TOTAL: $15 - $20 per DVD player, or 20% of $100 DVD player

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