A number of Chinese manufacturers are trying to once again establish a new DVD alternative/successor, called EVD (Enhanced Versatile Disc). After a somewhat failed launch of the same standard back in 2003, the Chinese companies are once again claiming that EVD is the true successor of the DVD, and are switching to the new format in 2008.

However, an EVD is quite a different beast than Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. It's physically the same as a DVD, but the bigger storage capacity comes from using a different audio (EAC (Enhanced Audio Codec) 2.0.) and video (VP5 and VP6) codecs for better compression. It didn't make much of an impact worldwide when it was introduced in 2003, but now, when the big Chinese manufacturers completely switch to the new format, it might end differently.

The move to EVD was announced a week ago, however, according to Xinhuanet, yesterday Chinese vendors (Thomson, Haier and others) announced 54 EVD players which should push the format to wider reception. Furthermore, Chinese companies which are members of the EVD Industry Alliance will completely shift to EVD in 2008, and the worldwide exports of EVD players will start next year.

Labels: hardware, News