EVD-Is an alternative?

EVD (Enhanced Versatile Disc) is an optical medium-based digital audio/video format developed in china. The development was supported by the Chinese government and was developed by Beijing E-world Technology and US digital video technology company On2 .Chinese manufacturers are sick of paying intellectual property royalties for most of the DVD players they manufacture- which is around 80% of the total production of the world. Now China’s home grown format EVD comes as an alternative to HD-DVD and Blu-Ray?

Technically EVD is not a Blue Laser technology like HD- DVD or Blu-Ray. It is Red Laser like DVD, and is touted to be its successor. China plans to phase out DVD altogether by 2008. EVD essentially DVD, that uses a more efficient compression system. According to the format's developers, Beijing-based E-World and US digital video technology company On2; it is capable of displaying HDTV images. EVD’s developers said in the past, they would try and merge the format with London based ‘new medium enterprises’ VMD (versatile multi-layer disk) - a Red laser system offering 50GB on ten 5GB data layers. Analysts, though, say more than two layer will be difficult.

EVD supposed to be use the video codec VP6 from On2 Technologies. These are more efficient than MPEG-2 Video and could enable the disc to store HDTV resolutions, a feature the DVD could not offer when using MPEG-2. On2's latest video codec, VP6, which offers "better image quality and faster decoding performance than Windows Media 9, Real 9, H.264 and QuickTime MPEG-4," the company - formerly known as The Duck Corporation - claims. On2 offers VP6 free of charge for personal use. The x86 software can be downloaded from its web site.

Actually the format is already out in December; several of the players were on display at a Beijing art Gallery and are cheap lower than $100 price point - announcing their intention to fully switch to this format by 2008 - in an effort to decrease dependency on foreign electronic products.

Enhanced Versatile Disk-EVD