Troubling Times for Chinese DVD Standard 22
Turtlewind writes "China's second largest home electronics retailer Suning announced today that it will stop selling new EVD products. This blow for China's home-grown video disc standard comes just days after some of China's largest DVD player manufacturers flatly denied claims by EVD Industry Alliance secretary general Zhang Baoquan that all the alliance's members would stop producing DVD equipment by 2008.
The EVD standard — which was discussed on Slashdot back in 2003 — uses different encoding technology to avoid the license fees on DVD equipment. Unfortunately for EVD's backers, which included the Chinese government, the new standard failed to take off in the face of China's large existing DVD market."
This story is a startling contrast to this one ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is any one suprised? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is any one suprised? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why would they bother? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is China, right? Since when have they cared about things like royalties or others' intellectual property?
I suspect that if they wanted to make DVD players without paying the $20 fee, they'd just make DVD players, not pay the fee, and sell them within China.
I think this is more about producing a format within China that won't be adopted by the rest of the world, allowing the Chinese government more control over the media its people watch.