Taiwan's Advanced Optical Storage Research Alliance (AOSRA) and the Opto-Electronics Systems Laboratories (OES) have jointly presented FVD (forward versatile disc), Taiwan's self-developed red-ray high-definition DVD standard. There is expected to be a 10 FVD movie disc bundle launched in the domestic retail market for around NT$5,500 (£92) next month.

AOSRA, under the promotion by the FVD developer OES, is formed by 29 local companies engaged in production of optical discs, optical disc drives, consumer electronics, TV broadcast and distribution of movies.

FVD is competitive enough with HD-DVD in video quality but FVD products may be as much as ten times less expensive than similar HD-DVD models, OES general director Yung-sheng Liu claimed. FVD can attain definition of 1920 x 1080i and storage capacity of 5.4-6GB for single layer and 9.8-11GB for double layers on a single side, Liu said. The format adopts ASE (Advanced Encryption Standard) content protection system for copy right, Liu added.

Actima Technology and Idar Electronics are currently the only two AOSRA members making FVD players. However, some of AOSRA members, such as Tatung and Sampo, are willing to sell their HDTVs in bundle with FVD players and others plan to produce FVD-ROM (read only memory) drives for PCs and FVD recorders.

FVD was exhibited at the 2005 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas from January 6-9 and will also be displayed at the 2005 Comprehensive Electronics Show to take place in Taipei on April 7-11 as well as the 2005 Shanghai International Audio & Visual Exhibition in Shanghai, China, on April 15-18, Huang indicated.

Story source: digitimes.com.