China Readies Royalty-Free DVD Format 183
An anonymous reader writes with an InfoWorld article on China's new attempt to introduce a royalty-free format to rival the DVD. The article is not sanguine on China's chances of getting the EVD format used outside of its own borders (they tried once before in 2003). The submitter is more optimistic, asking: "Is this the future and the effective end of DRM — to be taken and co-opted by nation-states?" From the article: "The DVD player makers plan to switch to EVD (enhanced versatile disk) in an attempt to avoid paying patent royalties on the DVD format, according to published reports. The world's largest producers of DVD players, Chinese electronics companies would use the format instead of standards such as MPEG-4. Last week, 20 top manufacturers including Haier announced their plans to switch from DVD to EVD entirely by 2008, according to a report in China Economic News."
People's *VDs (Score:4, Insightful)
The other half, which that strategy wouldn't do, is lock us into some Chinese format instead of DVD. We might not pay Chinese crony corps royalties this generation, but there's no way to stop them from using some lockin on the next gen, like when they increase density for HD-EVD, or some other creepy strategy they learned from the current Euramerican masters of the game. Releasing the format as a data format in open source rather than a HW format (ie. discs only) means that their attempt to upsell would be just another fork, which the rest of the world could ignore in favor of anyone's alternative upgrades.
I think DVD Jon [wikipedia.org] should start giving code to some real "maverick" Chinese manufacturers right away.
Re:Make it backward compaitble, and I'm there! (Score:1, Insightful)
Erm, the whole point is that they don't want to pay the royalties of the DVD format. In order to be backwards compatible, they would have to do pay them.
It's a matter of cost. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not convinced? Then look at where the el-cheapo DVD players come from now...
Black Market (Score:5, Insightful)
That's one of the nice things about Canada -- we can freely buy a lot of the things that Americans can't due to retarded embargoes. We have cuban cigars at the store where I work. They're expensive, since they have to be flown in, but we have them.
You know, for a country that spends so much time braying about its love of capitalism, Americans sure do their best to prevent any capitalism from happening. Cubans want to buy and sell their products in American markts? Sorry, no can do. Foreigners want to buy computer chips? Obviously they all just want to make nukes (forget for a moment that the computations are the easiest part of the entire processs, with or without computers...). China makes quality video players that aren't deliberately crippled? That's GOT to be banned -- using a product that you paid money for is supposed to unpleasant. Now China wants to make a quality video player that has even stronger DRM than domestic video players, and isn't encumbered by patent royalties; that's somehow evil as well. Seriously, who are the REAL communists here?
It's sad that "socialist", "liberal" Canada embraces capitalism and free trade so much more fully than Americans, who've been duped into thinking that a "free market" means that you get to choose which state-mandated church you attend while the government works overtime to inhibit competition and international trade.
irony (Score:3, Insightful)
G'luck (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It's a matter of cost. (Score:3, Insightful)
Either way, the DVD Consortium needs to stop pissing consumers off with region coding and other shit. That, and the movie industry needs to realise that falling sales aren't (entirely) due to "piracy" - they are because people don't really want to see American Pie 27 XTreme and watch all the same boring crap again.
Free Market (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're confusing free markets with capitalism. Capitalism is all about monopolies, corruption, and destroying the competition. The entire idea is to take everything you can at any cost. Free markets are a different beast, and are a bit closer to what western nations (and even supposedly "communist" nations, these days) strive for. Capitalism is what we used to do back in the days of wondrous events like potato famines and great depressions.
Going to mexico to buy things that are banned in America? Isn't that evidence that things are fucked? And it's not just cigars; we also import resources (nickel and cobalt, apparently) from Cuba, we can travel there on vacation (which a remarkable number of people I know have done), etc. We actually TRADE with Cuba, in a serious sense. America, meanwhile, posts security guards in the American zones of airports to make sure that Americans aren't trying to board flights to Cuba from other countries. Nice control-freak government you've got there. You should be proud that your ancestors died so that your government can decide where you go on vacation. I'm sure they would think that taking a British cannon round to the face was totally worthwhile to guarantee that their descendants would someday be sent to jail for duplicating a DVD (despite it being explicitly permitted in the constitution) or sharing (which the bible explicitly encourages, if you happen to think that the bible warrants anything other than scornful curiosity) artistic works.
There's a list as long as your arm of tariffs imposed by the US to protect American workers from having to actually compete with the rest of the world. A remarkable number of products can't be exported at all, or only to a handful of friendly nations. Many types of software are completely banned in the US (it's interesting how most Linux distros have a "non-US" repository for software that Americans believe will destroy their economy and completely unhinge people's morality).
Canada has some serious issues regarding free markets; but we're nowhere near as schizoid about it as Americans. At the very least we don't run around screaming about the evils of communism, trumpeting ourselves as the saviours of capitalism, and then prohibit people from engaging in basic reasonable forms of trade. The fact that America violates the free trade agreements that the US itself agitated for ... pretty much says it all.
Where is the EVD Specification? No mention of DRM. (Score:3, Insightful)
I have seen some mention of China releasing the spec, but is that to vendors only?
And is there really no DRM?
I will buy an EVD player and some discs if they are HD, and the specs are open, and no effective DRM is used. After all, I want to play the discs in Linux or whatever future device I want.
Otherwise, I'll stick with the last effectively-open standard, DVD.
DRM or private specification is the path of the Laser Disc.
Re:Cheap hardware? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Free Market (Score:2, Insightful)
We can still buy a gun if we REALLY want to, but since not that many criminals/anti-social people run around with guns here, we generally don't need or want one. While a Cuban cigar may knock you off your feet, it's nowhere near as deadly/destructive as a gun. Why would you want a gun?
Re:Free Market (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Free Market (Score:2, Insightful)
(I recommend that, if you must copy DVDs, you save the secret css-smasher for movies over 28 years old. Pretend you're working under a semi-reasonable copyright law--14+14 or 28+28. There aren't as many originals of the 28-year-old films, and the MPAA gets angriest at people copying hot hits.)