China Announces New HD Optical Format Called CH-DVD

It doesn't make any sense to me why the world (or in this case the Chinese) would need to create yet another high definition DVD format – dubbed CH-DVD which stands for China High Definition DVD. Luckily CH-DVD isn't a completely developed from scratch, but instead based on HD DVD technology combined with Chinese intellectual property. For you HD geeks, CH-DVD will use blue-violet lasers rather than the red lasers used in regular DVD.

The Chinese government hopes to cut down the spread of piracy by implementing an "advanced copy protection technology", which is still unknown if CH-DVD is using a new form of copy protection.

The China High Definition DVD Industry Association said that it will "make a big push to launch CH-DVD player into the Chinese market in 2008" and "encourage all related industries to... to make the transition from standard definition DVD to high definition DVD." As of right now, a foreign high-definition format means squat to North American and European consumers, but the mere fact that China is formally adopting a blue-violet laser technology could affect production costs of Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD hardware, if the optical assemblies for CH-DVD are similar.

[via dailytech]