14 DAY TRIAL // Although the final outcome of the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray format war is still rather difficult to predict, there are certain movements going on that seem to favor the first format, coming both from China and the DVD forum.
Thus, first of all, according to the people over at Screendigest, it would seem that DVD Forum, the international authority in charge of the DVD standard, has just approved a 51 GB single-sided triple-layer HD DVD disc for production. This extension to the normal HD DVD standard was submitted by Toshiba way back in April and has received the official approval at the end of August. This is actually a very important step forward for the backers of the HD DVD format, taking into consideration the fact that the lower storage space, compared to Blu-ray, has been one of the official motivations behind the lower rate of support among major film studios for Toshiba's next-gen DVD format.
However, that's not the only piece of good news for the supporters of HD DVD. Thus, it would seem that Toshiba has also submitted for approval a single-sided triple-layer HD DVD/DVD hybrid (combi) disc, the DVD layer of which would be playable by legacy DVD players, thus opening a whole new range of marketing possibilities for the HD DVD.
Another important HD DVD related piece of info comes all the way from China. Thus, it would seem that the Optical Memory National Engineering Research Center (OMNERC), a laboratory dedicated to optical disc research in Tsinghua University, has just announced the development of the CH-DVD (China High Definition DVD), a new generation high definition DVD based on the HD DVD format but including certain special content-protection systems developed by the Chinese.
According to the aforementioned article by Screendigest, it seems that the single major difference between the standard HD DVD and the new CH-DVD is the modulation scheme. Thus, the future players designed especially for this format will be able to read HD DVDs, but HD DVD players will be incompatible with the China-only disks. No further details are available for now, but it would seem that the Chinese want to have the first players and disks available in time for the Beijing Olympics.
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