Digitimes reports that several Chinese and Taiwanese companies are pushing a new optical storage format called EVD (Enhanced Versatile Disc):

An umbrella organization called the “Advanced Optical Storage Research Consortium” will be set up by DVD disc and player manufacturers on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to promote EVD, said Derray Huang, deputy general director of the Opto-electronics and Systems Laboratories (OES) at ITRI. Specifications of EVD are being studied and will be finalized in the coming two months, Huang said.

Though Chinese DVD makers and researchers are developing an alternative standard called AVD (advanced versatile disc), they have agreed that EVD will be the sole future optical storage standard to be used in the Greater China region, Huang noted.

EVD will build on the current laser infrared-light technology and its data capacity will be similar to that of AVD. The two available versions of AVD format discs – single-sided, single-layer discs offering 6GB and single-sided, dual-layer discs offering 11GB – surpass the current 4.7GB single-sided, single-layer and 9.4GB dual-sided, dual-layer DVD discs in storage by a respective 27% and 17%, according to Huang.


Discs and players using the format should be scheduled to hit the market in the third quarter of 2002