Chinese setting their own standards

[wix]

There was an interesting article in Next (the computing section of The Age) yesterday. The article titled 'Confusion as China breaks with protocols' by Stephanie Hoo reports that China is adopting its own standards for various technologies. For example, it has developed EVD as a challenge to DVD and TD-SCDMA to replace the GSM and CDMA cellular phone network standards.

The reasons for doing this are several. It avoids the need to pay licensing or patent fees. I guess those Chinese people developing these new standards believe they are better than the original too. The downside, I guess, is the incompatibility with foreign sourced technology.

I am not expert in these areas but I would be interested to know whether others think this is a good or bad idea.

[skylee]

I am no expert either. But don't Japanese also have a mobile phone system totally incompatible with GSM? And Sony likes to develop things unique to its products, hoping that they get popular (e.g. memory stick, and that music format called "Att" something that I can't recall).

If the Chinese standards are good, perhaps people would like it. Who knows?

[geek_frappa]

this is a good idea. competition between standards leads to better standards, although one can survive in long run.

as a programmer and engineer, i'm learning all standards to provide continuity for clients worldwide.

i'm happy that China is returning to the same type of innovative fervor last seen in the Ming dynasty.

[sunyata]

I am not sure how far this will go, but it is a good idea - it may temporarily delay the capitalists from controlling world standards and markets entirely...

additionally, DVD is one of the most retarded standards ever (first you pay too much and then they thank you with their regions system) - it's only right that someone should not heed to it. Thank god for hackers and crackers everywhere

[pazu]

Chinese could do this because they have a big enough market to support another standard. I guess most people don't care about the differences in standard, they saw them the same as movies or musics, if they found that cheap and good, they use them.

[geek_frappa]

off topic, but i forgot to tell you: i added you here.

> http://chinese.primezero.com/pzcdz/u.html

[sui.generis]

EVD apparently still uses red lasers, but adds extra compression to get to the size they're at, saving on the expense of the lasers needed to run Blu-ray. Last I read, that will make EVD players much more affordable than western counterparts. They don't really need any other countries to sign since the Chinese market is plenty big enough to support the standard.

The main downside is for visiting American students who will have a rough time bringing their Chinese movies home...

competition between standards leads to better standards, although one can survive in long run.

More than one can survive quite easily. Look at DVD+R and DVD-R--most people don't even realize there are two standards. Most drives support both, and so most people don't have to think about it. WB is releasing a disc that has HDDVD on one side and Blu-ray on the other, and they aren't charging license fees for the standard.

Sadly however, the competition between the standards isn't competition amongst consumers, it is competition amongst studios. So technically the competition will lead to refinement, but the question is who gets the benefit. The competition will lead to better standards for the studios, whether there is any benefit to consumers or not.

[pandaxiongmao]

Even in China EVD is dead. The players came out 3 years ago. I don't know anybody that has one. I don't think licensing fees actually matter, since I am guessing most Chinese companies don't pay them anyway, especially for products sold within mainland China.

Has anybody ever seen a pirate EVD movie? I certainly haven't ever seen one being sold.

As for mobile phone standards, the TD-SCDMA standard is extremely late to market and relies on patents owned by Qualcomm in many countries. So even if it did replace CDMA, it is not going to change China's control over ownership of mobile phone network technology.

[sui.generis]

http://www.digitimes.com/systems/a20070102PD202.html

However, makers and retailers of EVD players hope to increase market share this year before the popularity of Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD players takes off in 2008, since EVD players are much cheaper than players based on the two blue-laser standards, the sources noted.

[pandaxiongmao]

As noted in the link you provided, Hollywood has not provided any support for the EVD format. Thus, any Hollywood movies at best could be pirate copies of Blue-ray and HDDVD discs. If the players don't play DVD discs, people won't buy them. If they do, there aren't any royalty savings for the manufacturers.

[griz326]

What protocols?

Trying to establish unique networking protocols would enable complete control of Internet content...if they replaced all of the Cisco routers in place. I do not believe that will happen for the complete stack.

New, revised, updated protocols are quite possible and part of the process.

As for protocols for telephones and consumer items...those protocols are often driven by marketing rather than engineering requirements.

[zarathustra]

Ah, it seems China is the Microsoft of countries; they don't like to follow standards.