The new format, called EVD (Enhanced Versatile Disc), will be playable only on EVD players and promises five times the image quality of DVD movies and a higher computer data-storage capacity, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
The first EVD players for home consumers will become available in China next year. Details about the format, such as storage capacity, compression format for audio and video files and type of reading laser used have so far been kept under wraps.
Development on the EVD standard began in 1999 and since then, several announced launch dates have been cancelled.
The China-developed EVD standard is among several projects supported by the government in its drive to reduce license fee payments and "shake off dependence on foreign technologies in production", according to Xinhua.
The EVD standard does not appear to be a user-recordable format for now, and aims to complement the DVD movie format for those with high-definition TVs. Talks are going on with film distributors to introduce content on EVD.
An EVD player will cost about $240 (£142), compared with around $85 for the average cost of a domestic DVD player. China-made home DVD players account for up to 70 per cent of the world market. China produced over 30 million DVD players last year.
Chinese manufacturers will welcome the new format, which promises to lead them out of low-end price wars and into the higher-value end of the market, said Xinhua.
The company developing EVD, Beijing E-World Digital Technology, comprises government bodies and 10 domestic electronics manufacturers.
Outside China, competitors have developed similar high-capacity optical disc formats in order to push DVD technology forward.
A DVD-recordable standard, known as Blu-ray, is being promoted by companies including Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial, Pioneer, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, Sony and Thomson.
Blu-ray technology is designed to allow a single-sided, 12-centimetre disc to hold up to 27GB of storage. The technology uses a short-wavelength blue-violet laser -- instead of the red lasers in current optical drives -- to read data.
Ding Kangyuan, an official with the trade body the China Audio Industries Association (CAIA), believes that if EVD products appear in China within the next three years, it could outflank Blu-ray, at least in the home market.
News.com's Richard Shim contributed to this report.
Talkback
America Atomic Holographic Storage - Patented.
Why Rewritable Atomic Holographic Storage Using Reprogrammable Transparent Optical Atomic Switch's ?
6,840 raw uncompressed TV hours on 10 Terabyte 3.5 in. removable disc DVR.
- will have highest NLO analog / digital / optical capacity available
- will have lowest cost per gigabyte
- will have lowest power requirement per gigabyte
- will have longest archive shelf life of any data storage media, 100 years
- will have widest environmental conditions and tolerances
- will be only technology that scales from nano to macro solutions
- will have most reliable removable read / write media available
- will have highest bandwidth data transfer potential
- will be direct replacement for hard disk drives
- will not be effected by extreme high energy stray magnetic fields, i.e. solar flares, etc.
- will be nuclear/cosmic radiation hardened capable
The expected cost of the Atomic Holographic DVR disc drive will be from $ 570 to $ 750 with the replacement discs for $ 45.
One 10 terabyte to 100 terabyte 3.5 in FEdisk would be EQUAL to a 10,000 to 100,000 Gigabyte FEdisk.
Thats 1,000 times any State of the Art hard disk technology with 100 Gigabytes on one disk. Hard drive technology will never exceed 500 Gigabytes on a disk.
Atomic Holographic optical image data storage bandwidth is 400,000 times faster than binary bit text processing bandwidths used in todays storage technology.
http://colossalstorage.net