HD stalled
Coalitions and countries duel over high-definition DVD.
Maury Wright, Editor at Large, EDN Worldwide -- EDN, November 1, 2004
HD (high-definition) video is stalled again. That refrain is familiar to those of us who have waited the better part of a decade to get our HDTV. But this time, high-definition is DVD stuck in the standards conundrum. The situation perfectly illustrates the complexities involved in setting standards for state-of-the-art products—with a global plot twist thrown in for good measure.
The DVD industry’s track record when it comes to standards is far from perfect. Remember when Sony, Philips, and others went against the DVD Forum to establish theDVD+RW format after the Forum shunned the +RW technology in favor of DVD-RAM and DVD-RW? That fight delayed the widespread adoption of DVD recorders for three years.
Now, the industry must address the move toward HDTV-level 1080i (1080-line, interlaced) resolution for DVD content. Consumers who have spent big money on HDTV monitors are waiting.
A product such as DVD involves many standards issues, including factors such as power and interfaces. But two major issues demand the most attention: the recording format and the video-encoding format. Initially, industry players both inside and outside the DVD Forum considered two approaches. The first involved staying with the existing 9-Gbyte format and using more aggressive encoding to pack a feature-length, high-definition movie onto one disc. The DVD Forum, working on what it terms HD-DVD, favored this conservative approach because it would maintain full compatibility with existing discs. Sony, Matsu-
shita, and others favored a move to “Blu-ray” technology. By changing to a “blue”-wavelength laser, Blu-ray would allow a disc to store 25 Gbytes. However, a player would need two lasers—red andblue—to play both old and new discs.
Now, Toshiba and NEC have produced a compromise, which the DVD Forum has endorsed. The duo has developed a blue laser that can provide higher capacity and also read today’s discs. The compromise reduces capacity to 20 Gbytes, 5 Gbytes fewer than Blu-ray.
Of course, the Blu-ray group wants nothing to do with the compromise. This spring, the group formed its own industry body, the BDA (Blu-ray Disc Association). Hey, if you can’t get your way in this industry, just create your own standards body. The game is clearly about getting your own technology embedded into the next standard, so that you can collect royalties on top of the profit that you make selling your own products.
Meanwhile, a battle raged for a while on the encoding side. The BDA initially appeared to be sticking with the MPEG-2 encoding that existing DVDs use. On the DVD Forum side, Microsoft entered the battle, trying to get its Windows Media technology into the next standard. As of press time, a rare outbreak of logical thinking seems to have taken place: Both the BDA and the DVD Forum have announced plans to support MPEG-2, H.264, and Microsoft’s Windows Media 9.
So, for now, we wait. Hollywood hasn’t weighed in with the standard that it prefers. Meanwhile, Sony has proclaimed that its Playstation 3 will use BDA technology. The BDA is also aggressively pursuing datacentric applications in addition to next-generation DVD video. And manufacturers will soon ship expensive, rewritable BDA products.
Enter China. Chinese companies and the Chinese government already had a major dislike for the DVD technology the the rest of the world uses. Specifically, they didn’t like paying royalties to the companies who had key technologies embedded in the DVD standards. And you can bet that Chinese vendors didn’t want to wait for the high-definition conflict in the rest of the world to play out.
So a standards organization of the Chinese government—SAC (Standardisation Administration of China)—rolled out a new spec, EVD (Enhanced Video Disc). The spec is complete, and vendors are shipping early products. North American vendors, such as LSI Logic, are offering EVD chip sets. High-definition Chinese content is trickling into the Chinese market, with some Hollywood content expected next year.
There’s nothing like governments, multiple international standards bodies, and the collaboration of private industry associations to stave off adoption of a compelling new technology.
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Hello,
I would have liked to read at least a bit more technical background on each of the standards involved with high definition DVDs. Especially the standard defined in China was new to me. Unfortunately, there is no technical background on this one at all.
Greetings
Horst
Horst Lehner - 2004-17-11 01:30:00 PST -
This is just another episode in the largest swindle that the American people have ever been subjected to. Creating an incompatable system was a wrong headed ide in the first place and it is just getting worse. We will soon be bogged down in multiple competing systems with no one (except a bunch of asian manufacturers) the winner. Lots of money is going to leave this country before we come to our senses.
William J. Ballad - 2004-16-11 07:24:00 PST
