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Asia’s Hi-Def DVD Challengers
China’s EVD, HVD, and HDV
Over the past couple of years, I have written in these reports (as well as in the
pages of DVDetc and HDTVetc Magazines) about the four Hi-def DVD formats in the
China/Taiwan market, three from China (EVD, HVD, and HDV), and one from Taiwan
(FVD). Please consult 2005 and 2006 reports to find details about those formats.
Taiwan’s Forward Versatile Disc (FVD)
I met with Mr. Job Liu, Managing Director of POSO (Power Source Group Limited),
who was representing the FVD
format at CES 2006. Mr. Liu
introduced also Margaret Fan,
General Manager of Idar
Electronics Co., a company
involved with the FVD players
and format.
They showed the player, the
movies, the FVD format efforts,
and we discussed about
specifications and technical capabilities of the format, discs, and players. At the end
of our long meeting, I was offered if I wanted to take the player with me after the
show, which took me by surprise, I declined politely, but I certainly accepted an FVD
disc demo as my after show teaser.
FVD discs and players were already available for sale back then. The player MSRP
was $250, and FVD movies were quoted as about $6 per disc, although I have not
seen an official price list as I did with Chinese EVD companies the year before.
FVD is a red laser solution that supports FVD-video and WMV-9 HD video codecs, and
WMA, LPCM and ITRI-Audio codecs. The disc can store 135 minutes of HD full-length
movies in 720p/24/30 (SL), or in 1080i60/p24 (DL, or 3 hrs TL), in addition to
720x480 and 320x240 regular video resolution at 60i. Peak rate of 15 Mbps at
1920x1080x24fps.
The FVD player is suited with DVI or HDMI and component analog connections,
optical and coax for 5.1 or 2-channel audio, digital sampling 96kHz/24bit. According
to the company at CES the player is able to output 1080i over component analog
because the format uses its own content protection system (ITRI-AES, Innovative
Technologies Research Institute - Advanced
Encryption Standard).
There was a PC playback software version
(Super FVD, in beta then) that allows the use
of existing DVD-ROM drives for HD FVD
playback of movies without any additional
hardware. There is no need for Microsoft’s
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