Microsoft to help Taiwan develop FVD format
Taipei, Sept. 9, 2005 (CENS)--Microsoft of the U.S. is scheduled to set up a Windows multimedia technology center in Taiwan soon and will cooperate with local software and hardware companies to jointly promote a next-generation digital versatile disc (DVD) format, the forward versatile disc (FVD), according to industry sources.
Microsoft Taiwan recently said that Jean-Philippe Courtois, president of Microsoft International, would come to the island to announce the technical-center project. Courtois is also expected to express Microsoft's support for Taiwan's digital-content development.
Microsoft set up the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) in Taiwan, the first of its kind in Southeast Asia, about two years ago, and the center has helped local partners create a production value of about NT$1.85 billion (US$57.1 million at US$1: NT$32.4).
As a global production power in information technology (IT) hardware products, industry sources said, Taiwan plays a deciding role in consolidating new standards and formats for new-generation products. Local companies have also been aggressively participating in developing new formats in order to grab business opportunities earlier in product development cycles.
Guided by Taiwan’s Advanced Optical Storage Research Alliance (AOSRA) in conjunction with the government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), the FVD format is based on a red-laser based high-definition DVD. The FVD's major rivals are blue-laser formats supported by large Japanese companies such as Sony and Toshiba. The format competition between the major Japanese firms has also provided some survival space for FVD.
Several world-class optical-disc makers in Taiwan, such as Ritek Corp. and CMC Magnetics Corp., have participated in the development of FVD format and are ready to mass-produce discs with the new format when the market matures. Some suppliers of pre-recorded discs on the island, including U-Tech Media Corp., have also released FVD films in a bid to increase product diversity.
Some optical-disc drive makers have also joined FVD development project and have devoted themselves to producing FVD-compatible drives. These companies include Lite-On IT Corp. and Quanta Storage Inc., but their total annual production volume of FVD drives this year is expected to only reach into the hundreds of thousands.
Industry sources report that Microsoft is actively pushing its Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) operating system, and that the new system is expected to trigger another revolution in the audio/video disc sector.
If the FVD format wins support from Microsoft, the sources add, local makers of optical discs and drives are expected to gain a great opportunity to enter the global market because they will not have to pay the high royalty costs of the big international formats.
The most important factor that will decide FVD's global success, industry sources point out, is support from companies in mainland China. Chinese companies, however, are reported to be working on a format called the enhanced versatile disk (EVD).
Generally speaking, the FVD format owns a price advantage over the blue-laser counterparts pushed by Japanese companies, but is not as efficient.
Industry sources say that the FVD format differs technically from the DVD standard in physical format, compression (encoding) and decoding, and content protection, and therefore is not subject to normal DVD royalty charges. First-generation FVD discs will have a storage capacity of 5.4-6GB for single-sided discs, and 9.8-11GB for double-sided discs, and will support resolutions of up to 1280 × 720 pixels. Second-generation FVD discs are expected to have a capacity of more than 15GB and will support resolutions up to 1920 × 1080 pixels
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