SuperVCD and LuxSonor (and answer to question on CVD-SVD compatibility).
John Rieman quoted EE-Times as saying:
>7/17/98 ... At least three incompatible formats have been duking it out in China:
>China Video CD, pitched by C-Cube Microsystems and its Chinese system OEMs;
>Super Video CD, developed by the government with support from ESS Technology...
First, I was wondering if anyone here knows in what way ESS has been a major supporter of SVD? (yes, I know they played a significant role in VCD3.0) The last quotation I saw from ESS about their relationship with SVD it seemed kinda lukewarm, techweb.com :
'June 22... But ESS will move into the SVD market only "when the new format becomes a legitimate standard recognized by the legitimate government body," Chan said.'
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My impression is that other companies have been attacking the SVD market well before that date.
I have personally seen LuxSonor's SVD prototype system decoding SVD style video back in February. By the end of May when they had their press release (article 33557 on this thread), LuxSonor had a quite complete SVD demo system: backward compatible with pre-existing VCD standards and decoding all proposed video formats for SuperVCD data at that time (MPEG-2; vbr; 1/2-D1, 2/3-D1, 3/4-D1, (and up to full-D1 with a 4x CD loader)).
I've also seen LuxSonor's demo system (with minor firmware changes) decode video from a CVD disc.
I believe of the US semiconductor companies this year, LuxSonor worked extremely closely with MII in its attempt to finalize the specification. This included: proposals to help develop the spec, experimenting on and making recommendations on various video formats, testing alternative proposed data sources like double-density CD loaders, putting some of their best software talent on the project:-), reviewing the specs, creating existence-proof-prototypes and demo systems, etc.
Ron
PS: And in article 34525 William Katz was asking if CUBE could support SVD.
This techweb.com states: '"we are going to make sure that CVD will be compatible" with the government-promoted SVD format, he[Andaleon director of strategic content at C-Cube] said.'
It is in MII's interest to have multiple sources provide SVD chips. I believe this is a primary motivation of the MII specification: people fear that HQVCD and Cube seem to want to control the spec tightly enough to have a monopoly over China's digital video infrastructure. |
