China Blue HD adding supporters and talking trash to Blu-ray

It momentarily slipped under our US-centric noses, but another log was thrown on the Chinese high definition format war recently when Universal Studios and National Geographic joined Warner in supporting China Blue HD. Format War Central also reports 8 new manufacturers have signed up to join the CHDA backing the format. That plus a claimed 3-1 sales advantage have the CHDA calling the format war "a game no one played" thanks to Blu-ray's high prices and licensing fees. It's still unlikely China's son of HD DVD could affect that high definition movie marketplace anywhere else, but it will be interesting to see if the country's manufacturers choose that path and upgrade their existing DVD equipment instead of replacing it to produce the even cheaper Blu-ray players we'd hoped for.

[Via Format War Central]

[JDM Posted Oct 1st 2009 8:52AM]

I thought EVD & HVD was supposed to be the Chinese SD / HD format of choice.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 1st 2009 5:32PM]

Didn't have the capacity. Besides, CBHD is taking off specifically because DVD and Blu-ray (eg commodity - or planned to be commodity - formats in the West) readers cannot physically read CBHD discs. This means the studios can support it and press cheap discs at prices people in China can afford without having to worry that the same discs will end up playable outside of China (and thus Westerners will be able to import them.) No hacks to a BD or DVD player will ever make them playable here.

CBHD is simply an incredibly effective means of region encoding, nothing more and nothing less. And this is also why CBHD will not end up outside of China - the day any Chinese manufacturer starts exporting CBHD players to the US is the day Warner and the others withdraw support for the format.

[TheOmegaMan Posted Dec 18th 2009 5:20AM]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grHXXXs5Dm0

[Spunky Monkey 190906 Posted Oct 1st 2009 12:05PM]

Where did they come from? :O

[E71 Posted Oct 10th 2009 10:23PM]

They want to use crap... let 'em use crap. Not our problem.