CBHD Standards, Licensing and Patents
What carried a standard number-and what did not
The DVD Forum approved the Chinese HD DVD physical-format text in February 2007. The CBHD application format was developed mainly in China afterwards. Formal DVD Forum book names and version strings for “HD DVD China” were searched for and not found. Component standards that did receive numbers:
- AVS video: GB/T 20090.2-2006
- DRA audio: SJ/T 11368-2006; GB/T 22726-2008
CBHD itself: no GB/T or SJ/T standard number was found by any research pass. OMNERC drafts press-and-publication (新闻出版) disc standards-for example it was a lead drafter of a CD-DA test-parameter industry standard on std.samr.gov.cn-so any CBHD standard is more likely a CY/T or 新闻出版 document than an SJ/T. That is an inference pending a manual search of std.samr.gov.cn. One pass refers to a CHDA published format document (2009) as the reference for mandatory AVS video/audio and DKAA; a placeholder citation like “AVS (GB R1xxx)” in secondary text is not a real standard number.
Royalty arithmetic
Physical format accounts for 60-70% of disc royalties; application format for 30-40%. In CBHD, modulation-coding patents are Chinese-owned. Foreign holders of RF and servo patents had to place them in a CBHD patent pool controlled by Chinese companies. AVS, navigation and DRM patents are held jointly by Chinese and foreign companies.
Comparison figures used in contemporary reporting:
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| Blu-ray player fee | $9.50 |
| Blu-ray recorder fee | $14 |
| BD-ROM disc fee | $0.11 |
| CBHD player royalty (expected) | about $8 (DFC Intelligence, 28 Jul 2008) |
| DVD cumulative per player | about $22 or about €15 (sources differ) |
| One maker’s claimed DVD fee saved | $21 |
| AVS decoder licence | about 1 RMB |
CHDA argued that Chinese factories could press discs on existing DVD lines with minimal retooling while avoiding foreign royalties that Blu-ray lines would have imposed. The $8 CBHD player figure is an expected range from analyst reporting, not a published tariff schedule recovered in the passes.
Patent entries that name CBHD explicitly
The following patents relate to CBHD. They are not all core CBHD patents and are not all labelled as such in their titles.
CN101908354B – RLL modulation coding
Applicants: Tsinghua University and OMNERC; Polystar Digidisc also listed as current assignee. Filed 4 June 2009 (CN200910085226); published 8 December 2010 as CN101908354A; granted 25 July 2012; later lapsed for non-payment. Inventors include 倪屹, 裴京, 潘龙法, 徐海峥, 陆达, 刘海龙, 刘相伟. Claims a 4/5 plus 3/3 conversion code for blue-laser multi-level storage with track pitch under 0.52 μm; cites CN101567207A. Caveat: this is an OMNERC RLL patent by the CBHD team, not confirmed as the 4-6 FSM code used in commercial CBHD. The FSM patent itself was not located.
CN101556807B – CBHD blue-laser optical pickup
Application CN2008100234723A; priority 7 April 2008; inventor 杨南荔; granted 4 January 2012. Describes a complete blue/red optical path for a CBHD pickup: blue laser, red laser, diffraction gratings, prism, quarter-wave plate, beam splitter, astigmatic lens and photodetector, with physical optical dimensions. Shows Chinese work extended to CBHD-specific, Chinese-owned optical pickup hardware.
CN201549222U – multi-format optical pickup mechanism
Concerns a pickup able to handle multiple disc formats. States that CBHD and Blu-ray were incompatible and describes the problem of building a pickup supporting both; identifies CBHD as a 405 nm format with DVD-like production architecture.
CN102682801B – objective lens compatible with BD and CBHD
Priority 17 March 2011; inventors 李荣彬, 杜雪, 李莉华, 王文奎; assignee Hong Kong Polytechnic University. A freeform objective lens focusing 405 nm light correctly for both BD (NA 0.85) and CBHD (NA 0.65). Direct evidence that BD/CBHD compatibility required optical engineering, not firmware alone.
CN102157185A – Blu-ray/CBHD/DVD/CD optical front end
Uses the Novatek NT90912 servo DSP, supporting FSM, ETM, EFM+ and EFM-covering CBHD, DVD and CD. RF amplifier: Novatek NT90902, about 60 MHz bandwidth, supporting CBHD/DVD/CD differential signals and tracking-error detection. Shows at least one later optical chipset was designed to handle CBHD’s FSM channel alongside conventional formats. Novatek documentation and chips are therefore a major research target for modern CBHD hardware.
CN101712809A – organic dye and recordable CBHD medium
Describes CBHD as then a read-only format for replicated video discs and proposes a dye system for a recordable CBHD medium. Evidence that CBHD-R was technically contemplated even though commercial CBHD remained pressed/read-only.
Six-area patent research map
| Area | Topics |
|---|---|
| A. Physical disc | Modulation, channel coding, error correction, servo, optical pickup, objective lenses, disc structure |
| B. Application | Navigation, file system, video packaging, subtitles, menus |
| C. Codec | AVS, DRA |
| D. DRM | DKAA, key management |
| E. Hardware | CBHD chipsets, combo players, optical heads, universal drives |
| F. Recordable CBHD | Dyes, recording layers, write strategies, recorders |
OMNERC and CHDA members filed patents on unique features (DKAA, AVS/DRA integration, two-highlight menus), mostly in Chinese databases. No official English-language patents or programming manuals are publicly distributed in the sense the passes sought. Specific DKAA patent numbers were not found by any pass.
Licensing administrators and AACS paperwork
Japanese Wikipedia states CBHD licensing was handled by BOC (Beijing Optical Consulting Co., Ltd.); that entity was not located as a live website in the research pass. An AACS Licensing Administrator order form carries a “CBHD (China)” category with both Pre-recorded (P) and Recordable (R) media options. Ja.wikipedia cites an AACS specification PDF for CBHD pre-recorded media, v0.90, dated 7 October 2008 (AACS_Spec_CBHD_Prerecorded_0.90_20081007.pdf). That document is a primary technical lead for international-content protection on CBHD, separate from the still-undocumented DKAA stack used on domestic titles.
Toshiba held licensing because it owned underlying HD DVD physical IP even after Chinese application work moved to OMNERC. DVD Forum-OMNERC agreements in 2007-2008 created a formal path for Chinese editing of specifications without making CBHD discs playable in ordinary HD DVD players. Standards paperwork and playback compatibility remain different questions.
Open standard-number work
Until a CY/T, 新闻出版 or CHDA book identifier is recovered, “CBHD standard” citations should name the CHDA 2009 format document (when located), the DVD Forum February 2007 physical-format approval, GB/T 20090.2-2006 for AVS video, and GB/T 22726-2008 / SJ/T 11368-2006 for DRA-not an invented GB/T for the whole disc format. Patent PDFs above are concrete; the FSM 4-6 patent and DKAA patents remain missing pieces on the map.
How royalties were supposed to change the factory floor
CHDA’s public argument was not only about cheaper players. Physical-format royalties dominate disc economics (60-70% of disc royalty stacks in the framing used by the research passes). By replacing ETM with Chinese-owned 4-6 FSM modulation patents, the alliance claimed Chinese factories could keep pressing on upgraded DVD lines while avoiding Blu-ray Disc Association fees and reducing dependence on foreign pools that had charged roughly $21-22 per DVD player. DFC Intelligence’s 28 July 2008 note that CBHD player royalties were “expected to be in the $8 range” sat beside Blu-ray’s published $9.50 player / $14 recorder / $0.11 BD-ROM figures as a competitive talking point. AVS’s ~1 RMB decoder licence reinforced the narrative that China could own the expensive layers.
Foreign RF and servo patents still existed; the model required placing them in a CBHD pool controlled by Chinese companies rather than eliminating physics patents altogether. Application-format royalties (30-40%) mixed Chinese and foreign holdings on navigation, codecs and DRM. Toshiba retained licensing leverage because it owned underlying HD DVD physical IP even after OMNERC received editing rights in February 2008. Standards approval and commercial royalty schedules are therefore related but not identical stories.
Reading the six patents as a hardware map
Taken together, CN101908354B (RLL coding by the OMNERC team), CN101556807B (CBHD blue/red pickup), CN201549222U (multi-format pickup problem statement), CN102682801B (BD/CBHD freeform lens), CN102157185A (Novatek FSM-capable front end) and CN101712809A (recordable dye) sketch a research programme that reached into pickups, lenses, channel DSPs and even CBHD-R media-not merely a codec swap. None of these documents is a substitute for the missing commercial FSM patent or a DKAA specification, but they falsify the idea that CBHD left no Chinese-owned hardware trail.
Google Patents and CNIPA PDFs for the granted numbers above are live research entry points. Inventor lists overlap OMNERC names already tied to the 2005-2009 programme (陆达 and colleagues on the RLL patent). Assignees change over time. CN101908354B later lapsed for non-payment.
AACS paperwork versus DKAA silence
International titles dragged CBHD into the AACS ecosystem: interim CBHD AACS documents in 2007, a Pre-recorded Book v0.90 dated 7 October 2008, and an LA order form category for CBHD (China) Pre-recorded and Recordable media. Domestic titles used DKAA, described only in fragments-dual-key marketing language, Gemini’s MKB/lead-in and hardware key-exchange sketch, HDCP enforcement notes. No pass recovered DKAA patent numbers or a public specification. Preservationists therefore inherit a split stack: AACS tools and literature may apply to Warner-class international CBHD discs; domestic discs remain opaque until DKAA artefacts surface in Chinese patent or CHDA archives.
Japanese Wikipedia’s claim that BOC (Beijing Optical Consulting) administered CBHD licensing is an unconfirmed lead; the entity was not located as a live site. CHDA/CHDIA member lists and Toshiba licence schedules remain complementary targets. Until a CY/T or 新闻出版 number appears on std.samr.gov.cn, cite component GB/T numbers and the DVD Forum 2007 physical-format approval rather than inventing a whole-format GB/T code.
Further reading on historic video formats
If you want to learn more about historic video formats, get The History of Physical Video Formats from the Frontier by Stephen Driver on Amazon: