BEIJING -
Nearly 20 leading Chinese manufacturers will stop
making DVD (digital versatile/video disc) players
from 2008, replacing them with next-generation EVD
(enhanced versatile disc) players based on Chinese
home-grown technology.
The companies
involved, including Shinco, Amoi, Hisense and TCL,
will make a joint announcement of the switch on
Wednesday, said Zhang Baoquan, chairman of Antaeus
Group, a real-estate developer that has thrown its
weight behind EVD in
recent
years, and secretary general of the EVD Industry
Alliance, which is dedicated to promoting the new
standard.
Ending production of DVD players
and boosting EVD production will help the new
standard succeed in the marketplace, Zhang said.
All firms involved are members of the EVD Industry
Alliance.
EVD will compete with HD-DVD
(high definition) and Blu-ray standards as DVD
technology is phased out. Producing HD-DVD and
Blu-ray products, mainly supported by companies in
the United States and Japan, would mean high
copyright fees for Chinese manufacturers. The
government has been backing the EVD standard to
try to reduce the country's reliance on foreign
technology. As DVD technology is owned by foreign
patent holders, Chinese DVD player manufacturers
currently have to pay significant licensing fees
each year.
In the past year, EVD has
lacked industrywide support, with few films being
produced in the new standard. "We are seeking more
support from publishers and distributors,
including those in Hollywood," Zhang said.
Most EVD players will be able to play DVD
discs. But buyers of the machines will most likely
want to buy EVD-formatted films to take advantage
of the new technology, Zhang said.
Chinese
manufacturers will display more than 50 models of
EVD players next Wednesday, with an average
selling price of 700 yuan (US$89) per unit.
"That price is roughly the same as the
average price of a DVD player, which could spur
the uptake of EVD players in China," Zhang said.
The EVD Industry Alliance will soon offer
a service that lets owners of EVD players copy
digital formats of films based on the standard
from a special vending machine. Consumers could
put the films on their portable hard disks under a
"pay as you copy" model and play them on their EVD
player.
Film-production houses and
distributors can share the revenues from charging
consumers for copying. Encryption technology could
limit play to one EVD player, which would help
stop piracy.
Zhang said the EVD Industry
Alliance will have 800 franchised outlets selling
EVD discs by Wednesday with hopes of raising that
number to 1,200 by the end of the year. Gome,
China's largest consumer-electronics retailer,
also a member of the EVD Industry Alliance, will
open 150 special sections in its shops around the
country to sell EVD players.
In another
development, 13 Chinese color-television producers
are registering a joint venture for negotiating
the patent fee for digital TV with foreign patent
holders, an official with the China Video Industry
Association (CVIA) told China Business News. The
13 color-TV producers are Changhong, TCL, Konka,
Skyworth, HiSense, Xoceco, Haier, SAV, Panda,
Westlake, Shinco, Malata and Amoisonic. The joint
venture is scheduled to start officially at the
end of this month.
According to the US
timetable, all TV sets to be sold in that country
must be digital as of March 1, and the digital TV
must conform to the technical requirements of the
Advanced Television Systems Committee standard,
which is tied up with related patents.
So
far, more than 10 foreign digital-TV patentees
have come to China to seek patent fees, but the
price of $20-30 per set is unacceptable to Chinese
TV producers.
"We hope to get a reasonable
price through negotiation," said an official in
charge of a CVIA intellectual-property committee,
because the profit Chinese producers make from
exporting color TVs to the United States is very
marginal, about $2-3 on average per unit.
In addition, the Chinese color-TV industry
is taking other measures to cope with the cost of
foreign patents. For instance, after the
establishment of the joint venture, the 13 TV
producers will also form a digital-TV patent pool
of Chinese enterprises. Meanwhile, TV producers
will spend more on research and development.
After the United States' switch to digital
TV, Chinese producers will re-evaluate their
exports to the United States, and those that
haven't prepared for it may reduce or suspend
exports to that country, and some are even likely
to quit the North American market if they think
the risk is too high, the official said.
