EVD: Where Art Thee?

An optical storage article I wrote earlier this year mentioned EVD (Enhanced Versatile Disc), a next-generation red laser-based disc format championed by China as a means of, among other things, minimizing the profit-suppressing royalty payments that its silicon and systems manufacturers needed to pay technology rights holders. Last year, I speculated that EVD was for all practical intents and purposes dead; its backers periodically proclaim its continued viability but no actual forward progress ever seems to occur.

The latest 'EVD lives' assertion happened last week, as reported by websites such as Engadget and The Register. However, it seems that Chinese manufacturers and retailers alike aren't exactly bought in to their government's edict that EVD will supersede DVD by 2008. Originally, EVD's developers planned on using On2's video compression technology, but they later switched to high-resolution MPEG-2 after a contract dispute (which, no surprise, centered on a licensing terms disagreement) erupted.

MPEG-2 also is a royalty-burdened technology, but by supporting only it EVD is freed from the incremental royalties incurred by Blu-ray and HD DVD via their additional support for the H.264 and VC-1 video codecs (as well as their incremental costs due to incorporating blue laser diodes, high-precision lens assemblies, beefy system CPUs and memory subsystems, etc). You might think that an optical disc player that decodes high-def MPEG-2 should also be able to decode standard-def MPEG-2 i.e. DVD, but remember that DVD is more than just a video codec. There are audio codecs, system formats and decryption standards that must also be supported, all of which require access to intellectual property, in order to deliver a robust DVD implementation.

I haven't yet succeeded in getting a solid, consistent answer from EVD representatives on whether or not the format will be backwards-compatible with DVD (which right now, frankly, I'm interpreting as a "no"). One big downside of not supporting a modern video codec is capacity; archaic MPEG-2 is significantly less bit-efficient than H.264 or VC-1, and single-sided dual-layer red laser DVDs only deliver 8.5 GBytes of storage space. EVD's developers are therefore reportedly working with the folks behind VMD (Versatile Multilayer Disc) to squeeze more bits onto each plastic platter, although New Medium Enterprises doesn't appear to have unique access to greater-than-two layer per-disc technology.

China's tried before, and failed before, to drive its homegrown technology into the marketplace and into the standards process (its attempt to "evolve" Wi-Fi via WAPI is one memorable example). The country's potential customer base size is formidable, but its timing has been less so, and its negotiating tactics haven't been particularly skillful either. Will China succeed this time with EVD, or will Blu-ray and HD DVD's embryonic momentum once again squelch its plans?

Followup: more on EVD from Slashdot.