While Blu-ray and HD DVD players have a long way to go to catch up on DVD player sales, in China around 20 leading DVD player manufacturers announced plans to stop producing DVD players from 2008, according to China Daily. Instead, they will be replacing their models with Enhanced Versatile Disc (EVD) players, although some will be backwards compatible with DVD. The companies plan to announce this ending of DVD player production on Wednesday, in which they will display over 50 EVD player models, averaging around 700 Yuan (US$89) each.
While the EVD format uses existing red-laser technology, it will be cheaper to produce as it does not have the high annual foreign patent holder license fees that Blu-ray and HD DVD both carry. By dropping DVD players and replacing them with EVD players, this will also help make EVD compete with HD DVD and Blu-ray as the next generation DVD format in China, not to mention reduce their reliance on foreign technology.
As an alternative to buying movies on disc, the EVD Industry Alliance will offer a service to let consumers purchase copies of EVD movies from vending machines to a portable hard disk, where the copies can be played back on their EVD player. This will let consumers copy discs for a fee to pay film production houses and distributors. However, this copy may be limited to a single EVD player.
With EVD player pricing coming down close enough to DVD players, chances are that by 2008, it will make little sense selling DVD only players in China if one can pick up an EVD player for the same price. However, I cannot see manufacturers discontinuing DVD player production for sale to the US or any other market in the next few years to push the Blu-ray and HD DVD formats, at least not unless the pricing of each can be reduced substantially.
