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Blog CBHD Guides PC Playback
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CBHD on the PC: Playback Realities

Dedicated hardware first

Research passes found player software support outside dedicated CBHD hardware virtually nonexistent for ordinary consumers. Standard PC players-PowerDVD, VLC and contemporaries-did not support pressed CBHD discs. No Windows or Mac drivers or public PC CBHD decoder catalogues turned up. PowerDVD 7.x and early 8.x, WinDVD and TotalMedia Theatre handled HD DVD and AACS, not DKAA or FSM discs. Home playback of commercial CBHD software required Shinco or TCL players running their Linux-based firmware.

That historical finding has a careful caveat: one pass warns that “there were no PC decoders” has not been proven as an absolute. CBHD PC playback software and a CBHD emulator remain unresolved research targets rather than confirmed absences. Until such software surfaces, the practical statement stands: living-room and study use meant owning a CBHD deck.

Conflicting claims about PC drives reading sectors

One research pass states that computer HD DVD drives-Xbox 360 External HD DVD Drive, LG GGW-H20L, Toshiba SD-H4532-work at the SCSI/ATAPI command layer and, connected to a modern computer, can read raw sectors of a physical CBHD disc without firmware modification, passing encrypted or unencrypted AVS/DRA data to the operating system. Tools such as MakeMKV or specialised drive utilities could then extract streams, with FFmpeg (libxavs builds) decoding AVS video.

Other passes contradict the easy-read story. CBHD’s 4-6 FSM modulation differs from HD DVD’s 8-12 ETM. HD DVD players do not play CBHD. A drive needs FSM-capable channel hardware such as the Novatek NT90912 if the front-end must demodulate the CBHD channel correctly. No pass cites a controlled test of an HD DVD PC drive against a real CBHD disc. Treat sector-read claims as hypotheses until someone publishes a dump log.

What a successful PC read would still leave undone

  1. UDF parse and CBHD-specific directory conventions.
  2. CETC navigation interpretation.
  3. DKAA or AACS decryption.
  4. AVS and DRA demux/decode.
  5. Playlist and menu behaviour matching living-room players.

Sector access is only the first gate. Even if an HD DVD PC drive returned bytes, those bytes are not a finished movie file.

Playing material after rip or decrypt

Once elementary streams are available outside DRM:

  • AVS video decode: FFmpeg cavs (Jizhun profile) into mpv, MPC-HC via LAV Filters, probably VLC.
  • AVS transcode: FFmpeg with libxavs.
  • DRA audio: Tsinghua thesis codec (tianyigeng/DRA-Audio-System) or conversion; commercial Synopsys/Tensilica DRA IP exists in silicon, not as desktop apps.
  • DKAA: no decryption software found.
  • AACS international titles: standard AACS research path applies.

Mainline FFmpeg still lacks DRA. AVS+ (broadcast profile) support was only proposed in a 2026 RFC and is not merged. Confusion with FFmpeg’s unrelated game-format avs decoder remains a documentation trap.

USB and network as the documented “PC content” route

Original hardware already offered file-based playback that does not require burning CBHD discs:

  • Shinco CBHD-9100: front USB plays TS and MP4 files and 1080p video; loads external subtitles. Documented as the only realistic home-content route on original hardware in one pass.
  • Shinco HD-3700U: AVI from USB flash drives; Ethernet network playback from remote media servers and shares per factory manual.

Those paths use the player’s SoC decoders on ordinary files. They do not prove that a DVD burner can produce a pressed-compatible CBHD volume. For archivists who own a working deck, USB/network ingest is the low-friction way to watch modern encodes on period silicon without solving FSM mastering.

Emulation and firmware as PC-adjacent work

Dumping player firmware is a PC task even when playback stays on hardware. The TCL THBD-1008 stores firmware in a Spansion S29GL256N 32 MB NOR flash-an explicit dump target. Firmware may contain CETC parsers, file-system parsers, codec libraries, DRM implementation, hardware register definitions and strings naming internal file structures. No CBHD firmware files, update discs (升级光盘/固件) or public dumps were found in the passes.

HD DVD firmware archives (hddvd-revived catalogue, hd-dvd.org, Internet Archive Toshiba update sets, AVForums European Toshiba dumps, Reddit r/HDDVD emulator threads) are useful comparison material because the THBD-1008 reuses Toshiba HD-A30 lineage boards. They are not CBHD firmware. Generic drive cross-flash tutorials (LG/Renesas, MakeMKV UHD flashing, DVDFab guides) likewise transfer technique, not CBHD bitstreams.

Practical workflow sketch for researchers

  1. Obtain a commercial CBHD disc and at least one working player (ideally Shinco CBHD-9100 and TCL THBD-1008).
  2. Photograph optical pickup labels before scavenging donors.
  3. Attempt sector imaging with candidate blue-laser drives; record whether FSM hardware is present (e.g. Novatek NT90912 lineage).
  4. If bytes emerge, parse UDF and compare directory trees against CBHD_TS / HVDVD_TS / ADV_OBJ hypotheses and against DCA Book 3 assumptions.
  5. Separate AACS titles from DKAA titles before attempting decrypt.
  6. Decode AVS with cavs; route DRA through the thesis codec.
  7. Use USB file playback on the 9100/3700U for non-disc test encodes.

Until a published drive test resolves the FSM read conflict, do not plan a preservation pipeline that assumes any Xbox 360 or LG HD DVD drive will image CBHD. Plan for the possibility that only FSM-aware Chinese combo mechanisms or instrumented player dumps will yield clean sector images.

Summary table

Question Status
Retail PC CBHD player software Not found; absence not fully proven
PowerDVD / WinDVD / TMT CBHD support No
HD DVD PC drive reads CBHD sectors Claimed by one pass; contradicted by FSM analysis; untested
AVS decode after decrypt Yes via FFmpeg cavs
DRA decode Thesis codec / conversion only
DKAA decrypt on PC None found
USB file playback on hardware Documented on CBHD-9100 and HD-3700U

PC work on CBHD is therefore mostly imaging, firmware analysis and post-decrypt transcoding-not dropping a disc into a Windows tray and pressing Play.

Why living-room software never appeared

CBHD launched into a China-first retail strategy with Shinco and TCL Linux players as the intended clients. CHDA did not need a PowerDVD SKU to sell bundles at GOME. International PC decoder vendors already carried HD DVD and Blu-ray roadmaps; adding DKAA, CETC and FSM-aware drive support for a format with tens of thousands of players was unattractive. The result is an archival gap: ripped AVS may play in mpv today, but the path from pressed disc to remux still crosses undocumented DRM and possibly undocumented channel hardware.

Gemini’s claim that unmodified Xbox 360 External HD DVD, LG GGW-H20L or Toshiba SD-H4532 drives can pull raw CBHD sectors must be tested publicly before pipelines depend on it. Claude and ChatGPT passes insist FSM demodulation is a hardware property of chips such as Novatek NT90912. If those passes are right, PC imaging requires FSM-aware fronts. If Gemini is right, ordinary HD DVD ATAPI drives already return useful bytes and the remaining work is UDF, CETC and DRM. Until a hex dump and drive model are published together, preserve both hypotheses in lab notes.

Player USB paths as controlled experiments

When researchers encode AVS with libxavs and copy TS/MP4 files to USB for the CBHD-9100, they test SoC decode without claiming to have authored a CBHD disc. The HD-3700U’s Ethernet share playback similarly exercises network stacks documented in its factory manual. Those experiments are valuable and should not be conflated with ImgBurn-to-DVD+R claims about CBHD_TS trees. Keep lab logs explicit about which gate was tested: file decode, UDF parse, navigation accept, or pressed-media channel read.

Firmware on the bench

Dumping the THBD-1008 Spansion S29GL256N yields a 32 MB artefact that may contain CETC parsers, filesystem parsers, codec libraries, DRM code and hardware register strings. No public dump is known. Comparative HD DVD firmware sets from hddvd-revived, hd-dvd.org, Internet Archive Toshiba archives and AVForums European threads help map Toshiba-lineage structures on the THBD-1008 board but must not be flashed onto CBHD units casually-GPIO and memory maps differ enough that cross-flashing is described as a brick risk. Treat firmware work as read-only analysis until write procedures are understood.

Recommended lab notebook columns: disc title and whether domestic/international; player model; drive model and chipset markings; imaging tool and sense data; UDF volume identifiers; top-level directories observed; encryption indicators; elementary codec FourCCs after demux; player USB file tests as a separate row. That discipline prevents one successful USB playback from being misread as proof that DVD+R authoring works.

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:

Blog EVD Guides Player Hardware
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EVD Player Hardware: Genuine Decks versus EVD-Labelled DVD

Three things sold as EVD players

Collectors must keep three categories apart. Genuine EVD players (2004-2008) were built by alliance members on LSI Logic decoders and can play commercial EVD discs in HD over component (and later HDMI) outputs. Only a small number of model numbers are documented. HD-EVD players (2008) were announced with 1080p output at about ¥1,000; no model numbers were found. EVD-labelled DVD players (about 2008 to today) are ordinary DVD, portable DVD or even Blu-ray players whose listings use EVD as a keyword. They are the vast majority of anything found under EVD today and should be presumed unable to play EVD discs.

Contemporary early-2000s DVD player shown for era context, not a documented EVD unit
Era context only: a contemporary early-2000s DVD deck beside an LCD set. This is not a documented EVD unit. Genuine EVD examples include the Shinco EVD-8700 and related 2004-2008 alliance models with LSI Logic decoders. Photo: Ma8thew, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA (via Openverse).

Documented genuine EVD models

Maker Model Year Price Evidence
Shinco 新科 EVD-8700 (also EVD8700) Jan 2004 ¥1,998 to ¥1,698 to ¥1,398 list / ¥998 promo First and for some time only EVD player on the market; EVD/DVD/SVCD/VCD/MP3/CD; CD-R/RW, JPEG; AC-3/DTS; component output
Shinco 新科 EVD8830 2004 (not retrieved) People’s Daily Online 2004 top ten innovative products
SVA 上广电 EVD388 2004 (not retrieved) Sohu 2004 most popular home appliances
Shinco 新科 EVD-327 c. 2007 ¥1,200 PjTime 2007 buyer’s guide of fifteen brands
Nine launch makers 11 models (numbers not found) Nov 2003 ~¥2,000 Amoi, BBK, Changhong, Malata, Nintaus, Shinco, SVA, Skyworth, Yuxing
Twenty relaunch makers 54 models (numbers not found) Dec 2006 ~¥700 Including Haier, Skyworth, TCL, Malata, Shinco, Amoi (counts vary by source)

E-World’s FAQ later listed brands available in stores as Shinco, SVA, Amoi, Malata, TCL, GIEC (杰科) and Kaigao (凯高), adding that Shinco had the largest output and was the easiest to buy, sold through Gome, Dazhong, Suning, Yongle and department-store counters, with one-year free repair and a repair card in every box. c114 records that in 2004 only Shinco and SVA actually put EVD on the market. Those are different dates; both are kept. The model number is written EVD-8700 (c114, Baidu) and EVD8700 (E-World FAQ); same player.

Chipsets

Vendor Evidence Assessment
LSI Logic (DoMiNo) First semiconductor supplier of HD EVD technology (EDN 2003); EE Times 2003 and 2006 say launch and shipping players used LSI; LSI 2004 boilerplate lists EVD; iSuppli 2006: only one chip company provides EVD chips Only confirmed EVD decoder source
LSI DoMiNo family DMN-8602, DMN-8603, DMN-8652, DMN-8653 documented in DVD-recorder SoCs; support MPEG-1/2/4, SD-to-HD upscaling, CSS/CPRM/CPPM/DES Which DoMiNo part sat in EVD players is not documented
Amlogic HVD chips; listed as EVD alliance technology provider in 2006 No evidence of an Amlogic EVD decoder
STMicroelectronics 2005 H.264 next-generation EVD letter of intent No product
Zoran, MediaTek, Sunplus, Sigma, Cheertek No evidence of EVD HD decoding Modern EVD-keyword players on these chips are DVD-only

LSI sold its consumer products business to Magnum Semiconductor in 2007, which may help explain why EVD chip supply ended around 2008. E-World marketing explained higher player prices by the need for an extremely powerful consumer chip, equivalent to a Pentium IV, because EVD computes five times the data of DVD. That is promotional language, not a measured FLOPS claim.

EVD-labelled DVD players on sale today

Current Chinese retail listings routinely put EVD in titles for ordinary DVD hardware. Examples from methodical retail searches include SAST PDVD-7026A, SA-299, SA-298 and SA-065; Amoi DVD-618; Qisheng QS-39; BBK home DVD units; Jinzheng home EVD players; Shinco EVD.SDP-1510 portable; and even GIEC BDP-G5300 / G5300PLUS 4K UHD Blu-ray players marketed with EVD keywords. None of these listings is evidence of EVD disc playback. They illustrate the naming trap: EVD became a marketing synonym for disc player rather than a format capability.

How to verify a genuine EVD player

  1. Date. Manufactured 2004-2008 (label, manual, warranty card). Post-2009 products labelled EVD are almost certainly DVD-only.
  2. Brand and model. Shinco EVD-8700, EVD8830, EVD-327 or SVA EVD388 are documented; other alliance brands (Amoi, Malata, TCL, GIEC, Kaigao, BBK, Changhong, Skyworth, Nintaus, Yuxing, Haier) produced EVD models whose numbers are not yet recorded.
  3. Decoder. Open the case and look for an LSI Logic media processor. Record the full part number; published identification of the EVD chip would close a research gap.
  4. Outputs. Component YPbPr HD output (and HDMI on later units). Composite/S-Video-only machines cannot deliver EVD HD.
  5. Manual. Should list EVD disc playback and HD output modes (1080i/720p) separately from DVD.
  6. Disc test. Play a commercial Jindian Global or Zhongkai EVD disc. An ordinary DVD player should refuse it.
  7. Menu. Genuine players often show an EVD logo at start-up or in the disc-type display.

Service and manuals

Every genuine EVD player shipped with a repair card and one year’s free repair through manufacturers’ regional service centres (E-World FAQ). No EVD player service manual, firmware image or schematic was found online in the research gathered for this series. Chinese repair forums and 家电维修 magazine archives remain the most promising next sources. Until a manual or board photo with a readable LSI part number surfaces, treat the DoMiNo family as the known silicon line and specific EVD SKUs as undocumented.

Collector field notes

Price history for the flagship Shinco EVD-8700 is unusually well documented: ¥1,998 at New Year 2004, ¥1,698 with the June 2004 Dazhong experience-hall push, then ¥1,398 list with promotions to ¥998 plus bundled HD discs. E-World called ¥998 the most stable post-launch price, a fall of about 55 percent. The December 2006 relaunch aimed at about ¥700, roughly DVD-player street pricing. HD-EVD announcements in 2008 floated about ¥1,000. Those numbers chart desperation as much as democratisation: each cut tried to solve soft demand without solving missing titles or missing HD televisions.

Retail availability claims also need dates attached. c114’s 2004-05 reporting (only Shinco and SVA selling) is not incompatible with E-World’s later FAQ list of seven brands in stores; the channel simply changed over time, and alliance membership never equalled shelf presence. Launch-day claims of eleven models from nine makers, and relaunch claims of about fifty-four players from about twenty makers, remain mostly unanchored by surviving model numbers. Photographing badges, rear-panel logos and main-board markings on any surviving unit is therefore historically useful, not only for personal collecting.

Finally, do not trust the word EVD on a modern carton. Keyword stuffing on JD, Suning and similar platforms has turned EVD into a synonym for “disc player” across DVD and even 4K UHD Blu-ray SKUs. The format test is always the commercial encrypted disc plus the LSI-era hardware window, never the product title string alone.

What a surviving unit can still teach

Because so few model numbers were published, any authenticated player is a primary source. Useful photographs include the front badge and model silk-screen, rear-panel connector set (especially component and any HDMI), the power-supply and main-board labels, and a clear shot of the media processor package. If the chip marks include an LSI or DoMiNo family string, publish the full part number; that would be the first widely circulated identification of the EVD decoder SKU. Pairing that with a successful play of a Jindian Global or Zhongkai title, and with the manual’s EVD/HD mode wording, is the gold-standard authentication path.

HD-EVD remains thinner in the record: 2008 announcements of 1080p output and ¥1,000 players exist, but without model lists or board photos the category should stay labelled announced rather than collected. Until those units surface with documentation, treat HD-EVD as a late marketing rename of the same red-laser programme rather than a second, well-attested hardware generation.

Sources

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:

Blog CVD Guides Player Hardware
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CVD Player Hardware: Launch Decks to DVD Hybrids

Three kinds of “CVD player”

China Video Disc (CVD) hardware is not one product class. A deck that “plays CVD” can mean three different things, and mixing them up produces bad buying advice and bad preservation notes. Dedicated CVD players shipped in the June-October 1998 launch window under the CVD name, built around C-Cube CVD decoders before the national Super VCD standard settled the market. Chaoji VCD / 超级VCD players from 1 November 1998 onward were required by SJ/T 11196 to play SVCD, CVD, VCD 2.0, VCD 1.1 and CD-DA. DVD players with explicit CVD listings followed in Chinese catalogues from late 1998; Western DVD decks that only advertise “SVCD” may or may not play CVD streams at 352-wide resolution.

No complete commercial model list survives for the first category. What follows is a register built from 1998 press, later product databases and community testing claims-not a manufacturer catalogue.

Launch-era machines (1998)

Attribute Detail
Decoder C-Cube CVD decoder (CVDx1 reported in contemporary chip coverage)
Mechanism Philips 2× (double-speed) with CD7 digital servo
Claimed resolution Up to 400 lines (makers); 350-400 in Jinzheng coverage
Audio 4 channels (two stereo pairs), karaoke-oriented
Subtitles 4 languages / 4 subtitle choices
Compatibility claims CVD, SVCD, VCD 1.0/1.1/2.0, CD, CD-i
Other functions P/N switching, disc preview, programmed play, interactive PBC
Street price About ¥1,600-1,800 (Shenghuo Shibao, 22 July 1998)
Bundles Free CVD discs with Jinzheng players; “several hundred” titles bundled across a dozen or so makers

Guangming Daily’s 3 November 1998 coverage and Jinzheng’s July 1998 article are the backbone for the mechanism and decoder picture. Shenghuo Shibao supplies the resolution, four-channel audio, four-subtitle and price claims. Jinzheng’s piece is also the only press source that has been read as naming specific dedicated models: the Jinzheng N100 and N300, advertised with “400 lines,” four audio channels, four subtitle languages and a Philips 2× mechanism. That model-name reading is not confirmed in every later retrieval of the same article’s comparison text, so the N100/N300 designations remain reported rather than fully cross-checked against a complete scan.

Brands confirmed selling CVD machines in 1998 include Aido and SAST (on sale in Beijing by 29 July 1998), Jinzheng (taking orders), and the five launch makers covered in Shanghai reporting (Wenzhai Bao, Shenghuo Shibao). Changhong, Malata and Amoi appear in the June 1998 Shanghai launch coverage; BBK is reported among the first batch in Jinzheng and later encyclopaedia summaries.

Chaoji VCD / Super VCD decks (late 1998-1999)

After 1 November 1998, CVD support was a compliance requirement for Chinese Super VCD players rather than a brand option. Shinco Super VCD machines used Shinco’s own SVD1811 MPEG-2 decoder from its “超越号” digital technology laboratory and were fitted with decryption components to read rivals’ discs during the compatibility war. SVCD-camp players in Guangming Daily’s November coverage used a Sony double-speed mechanism with digital servo and a decoder reported as jointly developed by ESS and Shinco.

Feature creep ran fast. Between October 1998 and July 1999, Super VCD decks added MP3 and MIDI playback, handheld models, recordable models, networking and language-learning 复读 (repeat) functions. By July 1999 single-disc players were reported below ¥800. No surviving model-by-model list for 1998-1999 Chaoji VCD players was recovered. The 1998 repair compilation 《影碟机维修实例999》(李玉全 ed.) lists period VCD models such as Malata N10 and N30, Aido IV-720 and Shinco VCD-10C; those numberings are leads for contemporary platform families, not proof that each unit was a CVD deck.

DVD players that list CVD

Player Maker Year / era CVD evidence
DVD2000 TCL 王牌 Oct 1998 Plays VCD, CVD and DVD
DVD-N9168 Jinzheng 金正 c. 2000s Lists CD/VCD/CVD/SVCD/DVCD/CD-R/DVD
D1800K Konka 康佳 c. 2000s Lists CD/VCD/CVD/SVCD/CD-R/DVD
DVD-N660 Jinzheng later Lists EVD, DVD, Super VCD, DVCD, CD, MP3 (CVD not named)
Shinco DVD line Shinco 新科 1998 All 16 lines converted to DVD; backward-compatible with SVCD
JVC XV-N series JVC 2000s Marketed “DVD / Super VCD / VCD / CD”; CVD not stated
Sampo DVE612 Sampo c. 2002 Recommended on VideoHelp for SVCD at high bitrates

PjTime buying guides make the general point that domestic Chinese DVD players supported far more disc types-including CVD-than imported examples such as the Sony DVP-S7000 and Toshiba SD-series units that played only CD, VCD and DVD. That domestic-vs-import gap matters when collectors assume “SVCD on the box” equals CVD playback.

Chipsets behind the labels

Vendor Parts CVD relevance Evidence
C-Cube Microsystems CL480/CL484/CL680 (VCD); CVD decoder (CVDx1); Chaoji VCD decoders; ZiVA (DVD) CVD sponsor; CVD-era decoders Strong (SEC filings)
ESS Technology SVCD decoder with Shinco Government SVCD side Moderate
Shinco lab SVD1811 MPEG-2 Shinco Super VCD players Moderate
Zoran, MediaTek, Sunplus, others Later generic DVD chipsets Many listed SVCD/CVD Weak: forum lore

SatStorm’s 2002 VideoHelp guide said CVD-capable standalones were mostly “made in southeast asia” and “using C-Cube’s microchips.” C-Cube reported in September 2000 that it was the first chip supplier to pass 10 million DVD chip shipments and claimed about 30% of the DVD silicon market in 1999. The launch CVD story is therefore as much a C-Cube silicon story as a brand-name story.

Model register (as known)

  • Jinzheng N100 / N300 – dedicated CVD players, reported from the July 1998 Jinzheng article (model names pending full-article confirmation).
  • Aido, SAST – unnamed dedicated CVD models on sale in Beijing, July 1998.
  • Changhong, Malata, Amoi – unnamed dedicated CVD models launched Shanghai, June 1998.
  • BBK – dedicated CVD, reported in first batch.
  • Shinco Super VCD (SVD1811) – Chaoji VCD / SVCD class.
  • TCL DVD2000, Jinzheng DVD-N9168, Konka D1800K – DVD with explicit CVD listing.

Period VCD models that may share platforms with CVD-era machines include Malata N10 and N30, Aido IV-720, Shinco VCD-10C and Changhong VD-3000.

Maker survival and manuals

Aido 爱多 collapsed in 1999-2000; no official service archive survives in the usual places. Jinzheng / Nintaus 金正 still sells DVD/EVD players on major Chinese retail sites and was founded 2 April 1997. SAST 先科, Malata 万利达, Amoi 夏新/厦新, Shinco 新科, Changhong 长虹 and BBK 步步高 all leave some modern retail footprint under the old brand or a successor. No dedicated CVD-player service manuals were found online. Chinese repair compilations such as 《影碟机维修实例999》(1998) and 家电维修 magazine archives remain the most promising paper trails.

Compatibility: conflicting community claims

Western DVD-player CVD success rates are anecdotal and do not agree. SatStorm wrote in 2002 that many US Region-1 standalones compatible with SVCD still do not play CVDs. A VideoHelp “CVD VS. DVD” thread claimed CVD on CD-R works with about 70% of PAL and about 30% of NTSC DVD players, sometimes needing header rewrite or 44.1 kHz audio-while another user in the same thread said they had tested hundreds of players and never found one that played SVCD but not CVD, and a third claimed all SVCD-compatible DVD players are required to play CVD regardless of region. AnandTech posts from 2006 cluster around “more than half the DVD players in the US will handle it” and roughly an 80% chance that an SVCD-capable player plays CVD. VideoHelp’s SVCD overview says most SVCD-capable standalones support CVD. All of those figures are kept as open disagreement; none is a laboratory result.

A practical test pattern used in community guides is a short 30-60 second burn at 352×480 or 352×576, CBR about 2,000 kbps, MP2 224 kbps at 44.1 kHz, authored as an SVCD image, with an otherwise identical 480-wide SVCD as control. Test CD-RW first, then CD-R: many early DVD players read only pressed discs, and CD-R reading is a separate capability from (S)VCD support. Check basic playback, scan, chapter skip, audio switching and both CVD-style and OGT subtitles. If the 480-wide control plays and the CVD does not, the player’s SVCD support is effectively Philips-only.

Known quirks include half-width or wrongly scaled pictures when sequence headers signal unexpected sizes; subtitles that appear in only one flavour; subtitle failures reported above about 1,800 kbps maximum video bitrate; 48 kHz audio on CD playing slow (Sony S560D cited); Nero “compliance check” passing streams that exceed SVCD peak rates; and 1998 “interference code” discs that fail on rival brands’ players. Hardware collecting for CVD therefore starts with naming the category-dedicated, Chaoji, or DVD-hybrid-then treating Western SVCD claims as hypotheses until a 352-wide test disc says otherwise.

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:

Blog CBHD Guides Player Hardware
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CBHD Player Hardware: Shinco and TCL

Two makers, six production models

Standalone CBHD players were made by Shinco (Jiangsu Shinco Electronic Group, 新科) and TCL. Six production models are normally documented. The hardware record also needs prototype and pre-production categories rather than a flat list of six. Memory-Tech’s March 2009 announcement said TCL, Shinco and Tsinghua Tongfang all had player products in development; Tongfang did not confirm a retail release.

Model Maker Class Price notes
CBHD-9100 Shinco Flagship / launch ¥2,580 with 15 discs; reviewed at ¥2,999; ¥1,599 by Jan 2010
CBHD-3800 Shinco Slim / mid-range ¥2,980 list (Yesky); ~¥1,800 in one secondary account
HD-2100 Shinco Wall-mount / entry compact ~¥1,200 (secondary); Yesky “暂无”
HD-3700U Shinco Hybrid satellite STB / player ~¥1,500
THBD-1008 TCL Launch model ~¥1,999; £259.99 UK
THBD-1038 TCL Second generation ~¥1,600 (secondary)

Typical features across the set: HDMI up to 1080p, multi-channel or stereo audio outputs, USB media playback, Linux-based firmware. Price and class figures for CBHD-3800, HD-2100, HD-3700U and THBD-1038 differ between primary Chinese list prices and secondary summaries; both are retained below where they conflict.

Shinco CBHD-9100

First model, spring 2009, best-documented unit. Shinco designed its own loader/mechanism without Toshiba kits, saying it cost less than Toshiba’s design. An AVSForum thread describes it as “likely” derived from the Toshiba HD-A35 (unconfirmed). Specs include AC 100-240 V, 42 W; 430 × 330 × 58 mm; 3.105 kg; video decode AVS-Video, VC-1, MPEG-4, AVC, JPEG; outputs 1080p/i, 720p, 480p via HDMI, component, S-video, composite; audio AVS-Audio, LPCM, DRA, Dolby AC-3 with coaxial and 5.1 analogue; disc compatibility CBHD, DVD, DVD±R/RW, VCD, CD, MP3, JPEG; front USB for TS/MP4/1080p files and external subtitles; CETC navigation; proprietary 4-6 modulation coding. Gemini adds brushed aluminium chassis and HDMI 1.3.

Launch package bundled 15 CBHD discs not sold separately, including The Warlords (投名状), The Island (逃出克隆岛) and Flood (水啸雾都). An importer reported 25 free discs in October 2009; ja.wikipedia records a 16-disc bundle; Suning Shanghai gave 10 free discs in April 2010. PConline published a 5-page review with 54 photos (5 July 2009). 电脑报 2009 No. 30 tested it on a TCL 46-inch TV over component, including USB 1080p and subtitle loading. Shinco built 2,000 units before Chinese New Year 2009. Officially on sale 22 May 2009 with Warner and China Record discs per PConline (31 May 2009).

Shinco CBHD-3800, HD-2100 and HD-3700U

CBHD-3800: slim/ultra-thin mid-range announced early 2010 / launched around December 2009 with HD-2100, forming a high/mid/low line with the 9100 (pjtime). Yesky guide price ¥2,980 with USB and HDMI. Secondary description: standard chassis, HDMI, composite/component, USB, about ¥1,800.

HD-2100: wall-mount (挂壁型) player launched with the 3800; secondary account calls it entry-level compact with basic HDMI/composite at about ¥1,200; Claude pass found no price.

HD-3700U: hybrid home-entertainment gateway. Rear UTI (Universal Terminal Interface) port-Chinese broadcast equivalent of CableCARD-accepted satellite or digital-cable modules. Custom media processor decoded AVS, DRA, MPEG-2, DVD-Video, EVD, HVD, SVCD, VCD, SACD and AVI from USB; about ¥1,500. Reported quirks: pause on native CBHD dropped frame sync (first-generation CETC bug), forcing hard stop and re-seek (~0.5 s skip); DVDs/VCDs/USB AVI paused normally. DRA bitstream over HDMI often failed to lock on Western AV receivers because descriptors did not identify DRA. Factory manual documented Ethernet network playback from remote shares. Relationship of a separately named Shinco HD-3700 CBHD-HiFi demonstrator (July 2010 Shanghai launch) to the HD-3700U is not established.

TCL THBD-1008 and THBD-1038

THBD-1008 launched April 2009. Documented chips: NEC EMMA3 with VR5701C 64-bit MIPS CPU; Anchor Bay ABT1018 (1080i→1080p); Silicon Image Sil9134CTU HDMI 1.3a transmitter; Spansion S29GL256N 32 MB NOR flash. Video: VC-1, H.264, MPEG-4, MPEG-2; 1080p/24. Audio: Dolby Digital, Digital Plus, TrueHD, PCM. Outputs: HDMI, component, composite, 2.0 analogue, optical. Under 40 W; 430 × 320 × 54 mm; ~3.165 kg. Plays CBHD and DVD. China bundle 15 discs; UK package 14. Setup menu “almost the same as Toshiba HD DVD.”

AVSForum material quoting TCL’s maintenance manual states it “is based on HD-A30, and the motherboard is no doubt from Toshiba,” with firmware and 220 V PSU changes. Internal photos raised A30 vs A35 confusion: one shot lacked analogue 5.1 (A30-like) while a motherboard photo showed 5.1 (A35-like)-possibly a reference photo. ZOL’s June 2009 review tested an ordinary commercial CBHD movie that loaded quickly and played continuously at 1080p. GBAX imported it to the UK in October 2009 at about £259.99 with fourteen movies-the first CBHD player sold overseas. TCL stopped selling CBHD players around late 2009. pjtime (17 Oct 2009) adds output modes through 1080p, programme playing time ≥135 minutes at 1080p, JPEG to 1920×1080, standby under 1 W.

THBD-1038: listed by Wikipedia/secondary sources as second generation with network integration, updated CETC engine and lower power at about ¥1,600; no primary Chinese source found in the dedicated 2026 pass.

Chipsets, optics and donors

Hardware chain: 405 nm laser → optical pickup → RF amplifier → servo DSP → modulation/channel decoder → system processor. CBHD needs dedicated FSM support at the servo/channel stage. Novatek NT90912 (FSM/ETM/EFM+/EFM) and NT90902 RF amp (~60 MHz) appear in patent CN102157185A. Chinese pickup patent CN101556807B and multi-format pickup CN201549222U, plus BD/CBHD freeform lens CN102682801B, document optical engineering. Toshiba HD DVD players used Broadcom (e.g. BCM7411) or NEC SoCs with hard-wired MPEG-2/VC-1/H.264 and Dolby/DTS/E-AC3 decoding.

Because THBD-1008 is HD-A30-derived and CBHD-9100 is reportedly HD-A35-derived, Toshiba HD-A30/A35 (and HD-A2/A3 family) are plausible donors for PSUs, loaders and possibly mainboard parts. No source names the CBHD pickup part number; Toshiba PHR-803T is the documented HD DVD pickup used in Xbox 360 HD DVD drives-plausible but unconfirmed for CBHD. Drive firmware would differ even with the same pickup because the channel must handle FSM 4-6 rather than ETM 8-12. Beyond AVSForum TCL service-manual excerpts, no downloadable 维修手册, Spansion dumps or Taobao CBHD-specific parts shops were found.

Prototypes and extensions

Shinco CBHD-9000 appears in May 2009 AVSForum user reports among launch models with photographs (possibly a pre-production designation). Tsinghua Tongfang CBHD-0002 was shown in 2008 and photographed in 2009 without confirmed retail. CBHD-3D and CBHD-HiFi products launched in 2010; one 3D title existed by July 2010; model numbers for the 3D player were not found. No evidence of CBHD products from Amoi, Skyworth, Changhong, Hisense, Malata or Giec; no PC drives or laptops found. Haier and BBK were alliance members. Pjtime’s 2010 index notes incompatibility problems between brands because production standards were not unified. Tencent (5 Jul 2010): about 4,000 blue-laser players a month in Beijing, of which about 150 were CBHD-almost all Shinco.

Manuals, websites and where documentation hides

No complete user manual, service manual or schematic for any CBHD player was found online in the dedicated 2026 search pass. Queries included CBHD-9100 and THBD-1008 说明书 / 维修手册 / 电路图 strings plus Toshiba HD-A30 manual searches. The highest-value surviving technical fragment remains AVSForum master-thread page 5, where a member posted TCL THBD-1008 maintenance-manual excerpts: a block diagram and a labelled motherboard photo with chip identities.

Wayback Machine captures of shinco.com (news pages on Warner support, Universal support and product launch, plus neighbouring product and service scripts), tcl.com product trees from 2009-2010, and chdia.org.cn are the next places to look. Toshiba HD-A30 owner and service manuals remain platform references because the THBD-1008 setup menu is almost the same as Toshiba HD DVD. Chinese repair libraries returned no CBHD hits in that pass but still deserve model-number retries. Second-hand boxed units on Xianyu and Kongfz often include printed manuals and warranty cards-ask sellers for photos before purchase.

Retail behaviour around the decks

ITmedia’s October 2009 Suning visit found a lone CBHD-9100 among many DVD players and one Sony Blu-ray unit. By April 2010 Suning Shanghai sold more than one hundred Shinco units a month with ten free discs. Shinco’s December 2009 New Year promotion pushed an entry-level player at ¥1,500 with ten to twenty-five free titles plus the 60th National Day parade disc. Marketing general manager 李正洋 said in 2010 that Shinco aimed for about 2,000 retail points through GOME and Suning. TCL had already exited CBHD sales by late 2009 per Tencent’s July 2010 survey. Baidu Baike notes Shinco claimed independent development of front-end servo and back-end decoding-consistent with the story that the 9100 loader was not a Toshiba kit.

Donor strategy in one paragraph: prefer Toshiba HD-A30 and HD-A35 family parts for THBD-1008 and possibly CBHD-9100 mechanical and electrical donors; photograph CBHD pickup labels before buying PHR-803T-class substitutes; expect firmware to differ even if optics look similar; budget trial-and-error; do not expect a cross-flash to invent FSM support. A modern preservation front-end may ultimately favour Novatek FSM-capable Chinese combo mechanisms over hoping an unmodified Western HD DVD drive will suffice.

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:

Blog EVD Guides Standards & Patents
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EVD Standards, Licensing and Patents

SJ/T 11299-2005

The only published EVD standard is the four-part electronics-industry standard SJ/T 11299-2005 高密度数字激光视盘系统技术规范 (High-Density Digital Laser Video Disc System Technical Specification). No GB (national) standard for EVD was found. Western headlines sometimes called it a national standard; Chinese sources are more precise: it is a recommended SJ/T industry standard.

Part Title (Chinese) Translation
SJ/T 11299.1-2005 盘 specification Disc
SJ/T 11299.2-2005 高密度数字激光视盘文件系统规范 File system
SJ/T 11299.3-2005 音视频数据 specification Audio/video data
SJ/T 11299.4-2005 多通道环绕声增强音频编解码规范 Multichannel surround enhanced audio codec

Details retrieved from the SJ/T 11299.2-2005 national standards platform record:

Field Value
Type Electronics-industry standard, recommended (SJ/T)
Release / implementation 2005-02-18
Filing number 15185-2005
CCS / ICS M71 / 33.160.40
Competent authority Ministry of Information Industry
Responsible committee 全国音频、视频及多媒体系统与设备标准化技术委员会
Drafting units 北京阜国数字技术有限公司; 江苏新科电子集团有限公司
Drafters 徐翔, 秦志尚

Chinese press dates the MII approval notice to 22 or 23 February 2005; the platform gives 18 February as release/implementation. The record page has shown both a current banner and a withdrawn step in its status timeline; current legal status should be checked rather than assumed. SJ/T 11346 is an unrelated projector standard that sometimes appears in EVD searches. Full texts of parts 1-4 were not obtained for this research.

The On2 VP5/VP6 contract

On2 Technologies filed the E-World contracts with the SEC. The terms below come from the 24 June 2003 8-K, August 2003 exhibits, and later 10-KSB / 10-Q / 10-K filings.

Term Detail
Parties On2 Technologies; Beijing E-World; Nature Talent Capital Limited (BVI)
Agreements EVD licence and non-EVD licence, effective 21 June 2003
Technology VP5 and VP6 encoder and decoder
Territory Exclusive in PRC, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan; non-exclusive elsewhere
EVD licence fee US$50,000
Non-EVD licence fee US$1,000,000 in staged payments
Royalty US$2.00 per product with encoder or decoder only; US$4.00 with both
Disc royalty None (McIntyre: no royalty fee per disk is a big advantage)
Minimum royalty units 800,000 EVD decoders in 2004; 1.6 million in 2005
Minimum royalties US$1,642,000 (2004); US$3,350,000 (2005), conditional on VP6 DSP ports
Arbitration LCIA, London; English language
Amendment September 2003: exclusivity amended to a 50/50 China royalty split

Arbitration timeline

Date Event
Apr 2004 On2 announces negotiations have broken down
3 May 2004 On2 files LCIA arbitration; claims US$1,232,000 overdue, seeks US$4,992,000
10 Mar 2005 Decision: On2’s claims dismissed; no minimum royalties due because VP6 had not been ported to a jointly selected DSP; contracts remain in effect
31 Mar 2006 Second arbitration, seeking about US$5,690,000
2006 Settlement: E-World to pay about 25% of remaining unpaid licence fees by 30 Nov 2006
12 Mar 2009 On2 10-K FY2008: settlement still unpaid

About US$187,500 would be 25% of US$750,000 outstanding on the non-EVD fee; that is a derived figure, not one stated in the filings. Why the first arbitration failed is itself disputed: On2 filings emphasise the unmet VP6 DSP port condition; English Wikipedia says primarily because no significant number of player devices had ever been produced. What was dismissed is also worded differently across filings (counterclaims versus a request for a declaration). All versions are kept as open disagreements. For format history, the decisive point is that VP6 never became the working codec of shipping EVD players.

E-World’s own licensing terms

Item Claim Source
Consortium licence fee ¥500,000 per licensee plus US$2 per player People’s Daily, 21 Nov 2003
Proposed two-tier royalty (2005) ¥3-5 per player for domestic makers; ¥30-50 for foreign makers Zhang Baoquan
Foreign makers Foreign companies wanting to produce must pay patent fees to the Chinese E-World FAQ via PjTime

These are claimed commercial terms, not verified royalty ledgers. They sit alongside the unresolved fact that DVD-compatible EVD players still owed DVD-pool royalties.

Patents

Patent-count claims disagree and are kept side by side:

  • 25 applied for, at least 7 granted (English Wikipedia; CBS 2003)
  • 22 patents obtained, 5 software sets developed (E-World via PjTime/ZOL)
  • More than 20 national invention patents and more than 10 international (E-World material)
  • More than ten invention patents (赢周刊)

E-World described subject matter as audio/video filter transforms and encode/decode optimisation to improve quality and compression ratio, plus an SVCD-derived method of dynamically overlaying subtitles. Early 2006 reports said EVD patents had been pledged as loan collateral. No CNIPA patent numbers were retrieved; a search on applicant 北京阜国数字技术有限公司 would settle the count. E-World’s claim that it exclusively owns the related domestic and international patents is marketing language until matched to filings.

Standards research map

Item Status Where to look next
SJ/T 11299.1-4 full texts Not obtained Chinese standards resellers; university libraries; std.samr.gov.cn
Comparisons of EVD and DVD (CUC) Abstract only ScienceDirect full text; CNKI
CNIPA patents of E-World Not searched CNIPA / Google Patents by applicant name
LSI Logic EVD chip part numbers Not found LSI press archive 2003-2006; datasheet archives
On2 contract exhibits Retrieved SEC EDGAR CIK 1045280
IEC/ISO submission of EVD Claimed by E-World only IEC TC100 documents

Until the full SJ/T texts and CNIPA numbers are in hand, treat EVD standards knowledge as a partial reconstruction: platform metadata for part 2, trade-press codec descriptions, On2 SEC economics, and E-World marketing claims. That is enough to place the format in the Chinese disc lineage and to explain why the On2 deal did not define shipping video. It is not enough for a lawyer’s reading of what each SJ/T part originally mandated.

What the paper trail does settle

Three conclusions are robust enough to carry into later posts without waiting for the missing SJ/T PDFs:

  1. SJ/T, not GB. EVD’s published Chinese home is an electronics-industry recommended standard (SJ/T 11299-2005), co-drafted by E-World and Shinco. Calling it a national GB standard is a Western or promotional shorthand that Chinese standards metadata does not support.
  2. On2 economics without On2 video. SEC exhibits prove licence fees, royalties, territory, DSP-port conditions and LCIA outcomes. They also prove the VP6 port condition failed. Combined with EE Times reports of MPEG-2 MP@HL-based shipping players, the contractual codec and the retail codec are not the same story.
  3. Patent counts remain noisy. 25 applied / 7+ granted, 22 obtained, 20+ national plus 10+ international, and “more than ten” all circulate. Without CNIPA numbers, treat exact portfolio size as unresolved while accepting that E-World claimed filter-transform and subtitle-overlay subject matter and that early 2006 collateral-pledge reports damaged confidence.

E-World also claimed the specification had been submitted to IEC and ISO. That claim appears only in promotional reprints so far; IEC TC100 documents would be needed to confirm or refute it. For collectors and historians, the actionable licensing fact is simpler: a genuine EVD player still needed DVD-pool licences if it played DVD, which every commercially serious unit did.

Reading On2 filings beside Chinese press

Methodical research across SEC exhibits and Chinese trade press is what makes the codec dispute usable instead of mysterious. EDN’s launch-day VP5/VP6 wording and EE Times’ MPEG-2 MP@HL wording are not transcription errors; they reflect different parts of the same week (contractual aspiration versus shipping silicon). On2’s later 10-K language that a settlement remained unpaid into 2009 is likewise not gossip; it is a primary filing. When English Wikipedia summarises the first arbitration as failing mainly because few players were made, keep that beside On2’s own DSP-port condition rather than collapsing them. Open disagreements are evidence, not a failure of the file.

The same discipline applies to patent tallies and to the SJ/T status banner. Until CNIPA numbers and a current standards-platform status are checked afresh, publish the conflicting counts and the current/withdrawn ambiguity rather than inventing a clean portfolio. Later posts on players and discs can then cite this chapter for the legal and contractual frame without reopening every exhibit.

Sources

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:

Blog CVD Guides Standards & Patents
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CVD Standards, Licensing and Patents

What “standard” meant for CVD in 1998

China Video Disc (CVD) never received a CVD-named national standard number of its own. What exists instead is a short stack of documents and filings: a June 1998 enterprise (consortium) standard whose full text has not been recovered; SJ/T 11196-1998 《超级VCD系统技术规范》, which folded CVD into the Chaoji / Super VCD player regime; licensed White Book and IEC texts for SVCD; MPEG and CD structural standards that CVD reuses; C-Cube’s SEC language about CVD and Chao Ji VCD decoders; and a thin patent trail with no CVD-specific claim identified. This post maps that stack and keeps known numbering conflicts open.

Chinese standards records

Item Detail
Standard SJ/T 11196-1998 《超级VCD系统技术规范》 (Super VCD System Technical Specification)
Type Electronics industry standard (SJ), recommended (推荐性, “/T”)
Issuing authority Ministry of Information Industry (信息产业部)
Review 14-15 August 1998, National Recording Equipment Standardization Technical Committee
Announcement 29 September 1998 (Guangming Daily, 30 Sep 1998)
Implementation 1 November 1998
Filing number 2091-1998 (national standards registry)
Scope Discs and players; required CVD and SVCD makers to converge; player must play SVCD, CVD, VCD 2.0, VCD 1.1, CD-DA
Changes towards CVD Two technical changes (not itemised in the retrieved Guangming Daily extract); name unified as 超级VCD

The June 1998 “CVD standard” was an industry-consortium enterprise standard. A Beijing coordination meeting in July 1998 ruled it legal as an enterprise standard (Shenghuo Shibao). Its text has not been found online. No CVD-specific national standard number exists. Guangming Daily’s 3 November 1998 coverage states that SJ/T 11196 made two technical changes towards the CVD scheme and unified the commercial name as 超级VCD; point 3 of that seven-point comparison is missing from the available extract, so the two changes remain unnamed here.

One Baidu Baike page (超级VCD) gives the number as SJ/T 11198-1998 in the context of a Beijing Galaxy Computer authoring system. The national registry and most sources give SJ/T 11196-1998. Both forms are kept; 11198 is treated as a probable typo unless a primary document confirms otherwise.

International standards stack

Standard Relevance to CVD
White Book (Philips licence) Defines VCD and, from 1998, SVCD as extensions; not freely available
IEC 62107 (15 July 2000) International standard for SVCD; does not include CVD subtitles
ISO/IEC 11172 (MPEG-1) Audio Layer II used by CVD
ISO/IEC 13818 (MPEG-2) Video and programme stream used by CVD
ISO 9660 File system of track 1
CD-ROM XA / CD-i Bridge Sector formats and disc structure

IEC 62107 is therefore the international home of SVCD, not of CVD as a separately numbered format. CVD sits inside the Chinese Chaoji / SJ/T regime as a required playback target and as a disc family that shares SUPERVCD file-system identity with SVCD, while its characteristic subtitle format remains outside the IEC text. The White Book remains a licensed Philips document; researchers cannot treat public hobbyist summaries as a substitute for the licensed specification when licensing questions are at stake.

Licensing and royalties

The Chinese pitch for CVD and SVCD was royalty avoidance relative to DVD, but the formats were not royalty-free in practice. MPEG-2 video and systems fall under the MPEG LA patent pool. EVD’s later development was justified by DVD and MPEG-2 licensing costs “reportedly in the range of $13-$20 USD per hardware video player.” Chip IP remained foreign: C-Cube (United States) for CVD; ESS Technology (United States) with Shinco for the government SVCD side. A Chinese retrospective of Aido puts the dependency bluntly: “the chips were Dutch Philips, the mechanisms Japanese Sony; VCD was just an assembled product,” and “the real winners of the price war were these foreign chip companies.”

Disc production, by contrast, was described as open. Baidu Baike’s SVCD entry says Super VCD is “an open production specification, so manufacturers need not pay fees for this standard,” and that disc cost equalled VCD cost apart from content royalties-matching the 1998 Jinzheng argument that pressing plants needed no new investment. DVD fees caught up later: in 2000 the 6C DVD patent pool (Toshiba, Matsushita, JVC, Mitsubishi Electric, Hitachi, Time Warner) began negotiating with Chinese makers, and in April 2002 it reached agreement with the China Electronic Audio Industry Association on per-player fees for exports.

The political reading is therefore more precise than “royalty-free Chinese format.” CVD/SVCD avoided DVD-consortium control of the disc format and player feature set, reused existing CD plants, and kept consumer disc prices near VCD levels, while still depending on foreign MPEG decoder silicon and on MPEG-2 patent licensing for the compressed streams themselves. That distinction matters when later posts compare CVD’s politics to EVD and CBHD.

C-Cube corporate filings (SEC record)

C-Cube’s SEC filings are the only primary English-language business source for CVD. Key passages:

Filing Accession Relevant content
10-K FY1997 (filed 27 Mar 1998) 0000919870-98-000002 VideoCD “mass market adoption exclusively in China”; CL480/CL484/CL680 history; customers Idall, Malata, ChangHong, SAST, Xiamin Solid, Samsung; one customer = 20% of revenue; plans for “next generation MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 decoders” in 1998; half-D1 CLM4400 encoder
10-Q Q2 1998 0000919870-98-000011 Net revenues $82.5 million (+16%); sales from introduction of its CVDx1 decoder based on the new China Video Disc (CVD) platform
10-Q Q3 1998 (filed 16 Nov 1998) 0000919870-98-000013 “CVD decoder which is compliant with the new Chao Ji VCD standard”; China primary market for VideoCD and Chao Ji VCD players; Asian consumer markets about 45% of Q3 sales
10-K405 FY1998 0000891618-99-001073 FY1998 revenue $351.8 million; OEMs using its VideoCD decoders “also chose C-Cube’s Chaoji VCD decoders”

Note the shift in wording between Q2 1998 (“new China Video Disc (CVD) platform”) and Q3 1998 (“compliant with the new Chao Ji VCD standard”): C-Cube re-badged its CVD decoder as a Chaoji VCD part within one quarter of the MII standard. The customer list in the FY1997 10-K already names the brands that later appear in CVD launch reporting, including the still-unresolved “Xiamin Solid.” Asian consumer markets accounting for about 45% of Q3 1998 sales underline how dependent C-Cube’s decoder business was on the Chinese VideoCD channel that CVD and Chaoji were meant to extend.

Patent leads

No CVD-specific patent was identified in the gathered material. Relevant leads include US6370323B1 (“Digital video disc decoder including command buffer and command status pointers”), an LSI Logic patent assigned via C-Cube that illustrates decoder architecture patents but is not CVD-specific; and C-Cube’s FY1997 portfolio statement of 21 issued US patents and 61 pending, with expiries in the 2010-2015 window. Chinese patents (CNIPA) for 超级VCD, CVD 视盘 or C-Cube decoder terminology were not searched here and remain an open research task. Until a CNIPA hit or a C-Cube product patent expressly ties claim language to China Video Disc, treat “CVD patents” as an empty category rather than inventing a portfolio.

Standards research map

Item Status Where to look next
June 1998 CVD enterprise standard text Not found Chinese trade-press archives (电子报, 家用电器, 电子世界 1998); Jinzheng/Aido company archives
SJ/T 11196-1998 full text Not obtained std.samr.gov.cn (catalogue); Chinese standards resellers; university libraries
The “two technical changes towards CVD” Not itemised Full Guangming Daily 3 Nov 1998 article; the standard itself
C-Cube CVD decoder datasheet (CVDx1 / Chaoji parts) Not found Datasheet archives; LSI Logic legacy documentation
Philips SVCD 1.0 specification Licensed, not public Philips IP licensing
IEC 62107 Purchasable IEC webstore

Until those primary texts are in hand, CVD “specifications” in preservation guides remain reconstructions: SVCD geometry and file system, half-D1 MPEG-2 video, 44.1 kHz Layer II audio, CVD-style subtitles outside IEC 62107, and a Chaoji player mandate that keeps CVD playback as a Chinese Super VCD requirement rather than as a permanently separate national standard number. That is enough for identification and authoring practice; it is not enough for a lawyer’s reading of what the June 1998 enterprise standard originally claimed.

For later posts on players, PC playback and authoring, the working rule is: treat SJ/T 11196-1998 and Chaoji VCD as the binding Chinese compatibility frame; treat IEC 62107 and Philips SVCD 1.0 as the public/international SVCD disc references; treat MPEG LA and foreign decoder silicon as the real royalty floor; and treat any claim of a free-standing “national CVD standard number” as unsupported unless the June 1998 enterprise text or a CNIPA filing surfaces. C-Cube’s own SEC wording-from “China Video Disc (CVD) platform” in Q2 1998 to “Chao Ji VCD standard” in Q3-is the clearest primary-source marker of how quickly the brand was folded into the ministry umbrella.

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:

Blog CBHD Guides Standards & Patents
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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:

Blog EVD Guides Related Formats
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EVD Related Formats: HVD, FVD, VMD and Neighbours

The red-laser HD field, 2003-2008

Between DVD (1996) and the blue-laser formats (2006), several groups tried to put HD video on red-laser DVD-sized discs. The shared idea was simple: keep cheap optical pickups and pressing lines, and gain HD through better compression or more layers. EVD was China’s government-backed entry in that field. It competed with domestic rivals HVD and HDV, Taiwan’s FVD, UK-based VMD, and Microsoft’s short-lived WMV-HD DVD experiment, then lost the larger war to HD DVD, Blu-ray and finally CBHD.

Format Origin Physical Video Max resolution Status
EVD China, E-World, 2003 DVD-5/9, 650 nm MPEG-2 MP@HL-based (EE Times) / VP5-VP6 (On2 contract) 1080i, 720p (1080p HD-EVD) Dead c. 2008
HVD (China) Amlogic + TV makers, Apr 2004 DVD media Not verified HD claimed Dead
HDV (China) Beijing Kaicheng HD, Jan 2004 DVD media Not verified; later IP-HDV HD claimed Dead
FVD Taiwan ITRI / AOSRA, 2004-2005 650 nm, tighter track pitch; ~6 GB/layer WMV9 (also MPEG-2, MPEG-4 in players) 720p (1080i on three-layer) Defunct
VMD / HD VMD New Medium Enterprises (UK) Red multilayer, ~5 GB/layer MPEG-2, VC-1 1080p Dead
WMV-HD DVD Microsoft/studios, 2003-2004 Standard DVD-ROM WMV9 1080p PC-only niche

HVD and HDV: domestic rivals

HVD was backed by Shanghai Amlogic (上海晶晨) with roughly nineteen TV and player makers including Skyworth, Changhong, TCL and Malata. Three of those brands (Skyworth, Changhong, Malata) were also EVD alliance members. Contemporary reports say HVD launched with an Amlogic-designed chip whose IP was held in China, offered patents free to alliance members, and performed better in the market than EVD. 2005 HVD sales were reported above ¥200 million. In some months of 2006 EVD sold about one-tenth as many units as HVD. By 2006 Amlogic was even listed among EVD’s technology providers, underscoring how porous the camps were.

HDV came from Beijing Kaicheng HD Electronic Technology (北京凯诚高清), led by 任为民, launched in January 2004 with Gome and later Suning as channels. Kaicheng had reportedly taken part in EVD research before launching its own format. Industry commentators urged the three domestic red-laser camps to combine before Blu-ray arrived: multiple incompatible formats would confuse consumers and leave nobody large. They did not combine.

FVD (Taiwan)

Taiwan’s Forward Versatile Disc was developed by ITRI’s Opto-Electronics Systems division and promoted by AOSRA (about 29 companies). ITRI argued that DVD royalties of as much as US$10 per Taiwan-made player were unsustainable. FVD kept 650 nm lasers with NA 0.6-0.65 and reduced track pitch (0.64 µm) to reach about 6 GB per layer. Sigma Designs processors powered first players, decoding WMV9, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 up to 720p with hardware AES DRM. First Taiwanese players were expected around April 2005 at about TWD 5,500 (US$175). BenQ and Mustek were early supporters; Cheertek announced an FVD chip for 2006. Wikipedia describes FVD-1 as using DVD’s 8/16 modulation, 135 minutes of 720p on dual-layer and 135 minutes of 1080i on three-layer discs, and calls the format apparently defunct.

EE Times explicitly compared FVD to mainland EVD and noted that FVD backers looked to the mainland for sales. A Calimetrics Wikipedia article claims China instead chose Taiwan’s FVD. No other source supports that claim; China’s chosen industry standard was EVD (SJ/T 11299). The Calimetrics wording is kept as an outlier disagreement.

VMD and the NME partnership

New Medium Enterprises’ Versatile Multilayer Disc used red-laser multilayer discs of about 5 GB per layer (20 GB for a four-layer disc), with MPEG-2 and VC-1 video and up to 7.1-channel audio. E-World signed cooperation with NME in September 2005 and a share-exchange in November 2005; a 50 GB EVD/VMD was shown at CeBIT in March 2006. The partnership produced no commercial EVD/VMD product. HD VMD itself launched in 2007 and failed; its IP was later revived for larger-capacity experiments.

EVD versus DVD, HD DVD, Blu-ray and CBHD

Parameter DVD-Video EVD HD DVD Blu-ray CBHD
Laser 650 nm 650 nm 405 nm 405 nm 405 nm
Capacity (SL / DL) 4.7 / 8.5 GB 4.7 / 8.5 GB 15 / 30 GB 25 / 50 GB 15 / 30 GB
Video MPEG-2 (MPEG-1) MPEG-2 MP@HL-based (reported) / VP6 (contract) MPEG-2, VC-1, AVC MPEG-2, VC-1, AVC AVS, AVC, VC-1, MPEG-2
Max resolution 720×576 / 720×480 1080i, 720p (1080p HD-EVD) 1080p 1080p 1080p
Audio LPCM, AC-3, DTS, MPEG ExAC / EAC DD+, TrueHD, DTS-HD DD, TrueHD, DTS-HD MA DRA and others
Protection CSS Proprietary (AACS planned) AACS AACS, BD+ Own scheme
Standard owner DVD Forum E-World / MII SJ/T DVD Forum BDA China HD DVD / OMNERC
Launch 1996 Nov 2003 Mar 2006 Jun 2006 2008-2009
End Current c. 2008 Feb 2008 Current Niche

The table makes the structural point: EVD never left the red-laser DVD capacity envelope. Blue-laser formats multiplied capacity by three to five times on single-layer discs. Once HD DVD and Blu-ray launched, EVD’s pitch (HD on existing DVD lines) competed against true next-generation capacity, not only against other Chinese red-laser brands.

EVD in the Chinese disc lineage

Format Year Chinese standard Physical base Foreign dependency
VCD 1993 (China from ~1995) None (White Book) CD Philips/Sony licence; C-Cube chips
CVD / Super VCD 1998 SJ/T 11196-1998 CD C-Cube and ESS chips; MPEG-2
EVD 2003 SJ/T 11299-2005 DVD LSI Logic chips; On2 licence; DVD royalties for DVD playback
CBHD 2008 China HD DVD specifications HD DVD (blue laser) Toshiba/NEC HD DVD base; DVD Forum licence

EVD is the middle link: Chinese system specification on a foreign optical base, after Super VCD on CD and before CBHD on HD DVD-derived blue laser. EE Times in 2003 already compared EVD to the earlier VCD-to-Super-VCD pattern. Collectors should not confuse modern EVD-keyword DVD players with this 2003-2008 red-laser format, nor confuse EVD discs with CBHD or Blu-ray.

How to read the neighbourhood

For magazine-length orientation, keep five distinctions sharp:

  1. EVD vs DVD: same laser and capacities; different encryption, audio codec claims and HD output targets. An ordinary DVD player rejects commercial EVD discs.
  2. EVD vs HVD/HDV: three Chinese red-laser HD brands fighting the same shelf space in 2004-2006, sometimes with overlapping member companies.
  3. EVD vs FVD: mainland SJ/T industry standard versus Taiwan ITRI/AOSRA WMV9-centred disc with tighter track pitch; parallel royalty anxieties, different politics.
  4. EVD vs VMD: partnership and CeBIT demo, no mass EVD/VMD product.
  5. EVD vs HD DVD / Blu-ray / CBHD: red 4.7/8.5 GB versus blue 15-50 GB class; once blue laser shipped, red-laser HD lost the capacity argument even if compression improved.

Jindian Global’s October 2005 “five measures” against HD DVD (free film licences for EVD hardware makers, purchase guarantees for publishers, incentives for multi-title releases) show how quickly the blue-laser threat reshaped red-laser politics. Changhong and Amoi had already announced HD DVD production. The domestic red-laser war was unfinished when the international blue-laser war arrived.

Why red-laser HD clustered then died

Every format in this neighbourhood answered the same industrial question: can HD video ride existing red-laser tooling cheaply enough to matter before blue laser ships? EVD answered with government SJ/T status, LSI silicon and proprietary encryption. HVD answered with Amlogic IP held in China and free patent licensing to members. FVD answered with tighter track pitch and WMV9. VMD answered with more layers. None of them accumulated Hollywood-scale catalogues or a clear winner among Chinese living-room buyers. When HD DVD and Blu-ray arrived in 2006, and when China later adapted HD DVD into CBHD, the red-laser HD cluster lost both the capacity race and the standards race.

For this site’s later CBHD posts, EVD matters as the failed middle chapter that taught Chinese OEMs how expensive format politics could be when content, royalties and televisions were not aligned. For collectors, the practical takeaway is narrower: buy documented 2004-2008 LSI-era players and commercial Jindian/Zhongkai discs, and treat every modern EVD shopping keyword as noise until proven otherwise.

Sources

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:

Blog CVD Guides Related Formats
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CVD Related Formats: SVCD, Chaoji VCD and Neighbours

CVD in the family of CD video formats

China Video Disc (CVD) is easiest to understand as one neighbour among several CD-based video formats rather than as an isolated invention. It inherits White Book Video CD’s physical geometry and disc-bridge conventions, fights government and Philips Super Video CD (SVCD) over resolution and subtitles, shares a Chaoji VCD player-compatibility umbrella in China, and later collides in hobbyist language with XVCD, XSVCD, KVCD templates and half-D1 DVD. This post keeps those relatives distinct: what each name means, which parameters actually differ, and which naming collisions still confuse collectors.

Philips CD-i player - White Book / CD-i Bridge lineage
CVD sits on the White Book / CD-i Bridge physical stack that also underpins Video CD. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (Philips CD-i), CC BY-SA (via Openverse).

White Book VCD: the baseline CVD set out to beat

Video CD was defined in 1993 by Sony, Philips, JVC and Matsushita. VCD 2.0 (1995) added playback control, still images and clearer PAL/NTSC variants; a VCD-Internet extension followed in 1997; SVCD was published as a White Book extension in 1998. The White Book itself is not freely available and must be licensed from Philips.

Parameter VCD 1.1 / 2.0
Video MPEG-1, constant bitrate 1,150 kbps (1,151.9 max)
Resolution 352×240 at 29.97 or 23.976 fps (NTSC); 352×288 at 25 fps (PAL)
Audio MPEG-1 Layer II, 224 kbps CBR, 44.1 kHz stereo
Playing time About 74-80 minutes per disc
Directory /VCD (INFO.VCD, ENTRIES.VCD, PSD.VCD, LOT.VCD), /MPEGAV, /SEGMENT, /CDI, /EXT
PBC VCD 2.0 onward
Chinese quality perception (1998) About 240-280 lines horizontal; “similar to watching TV” (Jinzheng)

VCD’s resolution is a quarter of standard-definition television-the problem CVD set out to fix. In China the White Book was complemented by domestic “VCD 3.0” player features, which 1998 press credits SVCD (not CVD) with supporting. CVD therefore improves picture by moving to MPEG-2 at half-D1 while keeping the same CD Form 2 world that VCD already occupied in Chinese living rooms.

Three things called “SVCD”

It is important to keep three different SVCD-labelled objects apart, plus the later international text:

Name What it is Date
Government SVCD (超级VCD draft) MII / National Recording Standards Committee programme, ESS-supported Draft mid-1998
Philips / VCD Consortium SVCD 1.0 Government SVCD after HQ-VCD features were merged; White Book extension distributed by Philips 1998
SJ/T 11196-1998 “Chaoji VCD” Chinese industry standard and player-compatibility regime covering SVCD and CVD discs Announced 29 Sep 1998; effective 1 Nov 1998
IEC 62107 International standard for SVCD (and VCD) 15 Jul 2000

SVCD parameters-the base from which CVD differs-are MPEG-2 VBR video at a maximum of about 2.6 Mbps, 480×480 (NTSC) or 480×576 (PAL), MPEG-1 Layer II audio at 44.1 kHz with up to two stereo or four mono tracks (MPEG-2 multichannel allowed), up to four OGT subtitle streams, and about 35-45 minutes per CD at full rate. Chinese press claimed about 350 lines of horizontal resolution. Philips later added an SVCD logo to its Compact Disc logo family. Western “SVCD-compatible” DVD player claims usually referred to the Philips disc format, which is why Region 1 players could claim SVCD support without CVD support.

HQ-VCD

HQ-VCD (High-Quality Video CD) was the Video CD Consortium’s own proposal, released in March 1998 and merged into SVCD in July 1998. It survives as a disc-type variant: VCDImager can build HQ-VCD images (-t hqvcd) carrying INFO system ID “HQ-VCD”, system profile tag 1, mandatory /EXT/SCANDATA.DAT and optional SEARCH.DAT. No commercial HQ-VCD title releases were found in the gathered material. For identification work, “HQ-VCD” in INFO is therefore a rare system-ID cousin of SUPERVCD, not a synonym for CVD.

CVD versus SVCD: the engineering trade-off

Factor CVD SVCD Comment
Horizontal resolution 352 480 SVCD has 36% more columns
Pixels per frame (PAL) 202,752 276,480 CVD spends the same bits on 27% fewer pixels
Bits per pixel at 2.5 Mbps ≈ 36% more than SVCD baseline Fewer blocking artefacts in motion
Scaling to DVD-player output (720/704) Exact ×2 Non-integer ×1.5 SVCD “foldover” aliasing on many players
DVD-legal video Yes No CVD video can move to DVD without re-encoding
Interlace Full lines kept Same Both better than VCD, which discards a field
Visible detail on 1998 CRT TVs Close to TV limit (makers’ claim) Above what many TVs resolve noulakaz argument
Player support outside China Lower Higher Community reports vary
1998 line-count claims 280 (hostile) to 400 (makers) 350+ Partisan figures

The 1998 Chinese makers argued that CVD’s resolution was “exactly at the upper limit of the TV set,” so the extra pixels of SVCD-or even DVD-would only show on fully digital televisions (Shenghuo Shibao, 29 July 1998). A later VideoHelp user with a large player-testing background summarised the practical bitrate result: DVD at 720×576 “will almost always look better than CVD… except at below 4,000 kbs bitrates at which point CVD can look better than SVCD and DVD is likely to show macroblocks.” Those claims are kept as community engineering arguments, not as laboratory measurements.

Community variants: XVCD, XSVCD, KVCD and “CVD on DVD”

These names are not standards but community labels for non-compliant variants.

  • XVCD (eXtended VCD): VCD structure with MPEG-1 (or MPEG-2 at VCD resolution) above 1,150 kbps, often up to about 2,500 kbps. Uses SUPERVCD-style or VCD INFO; player tolerance varies.
  • XSVCD (eXtended SVCD): MPEG-2 in Mode 2/XA at SVCD resolution but not meeting the SVCD standard (higher bitrate, larger GOPs, custom matrices). A 352-wide XSVCD is structurally a CVD.
  • KVCD / KSVCD / KDVD: Kwag’s TMPGEnc templates with custom quantisation matrices, long GOPs and low VBR rates (examples include 528×480 and 352×240). Marketing claims of “near DVD quality” for 120+ minutes are the template author’s, not measured results.
  • MVCD (Mole VCD): an XSVCD variant from the MVCD template set.
  • “CVD on DVD” / half-D1 DVD: 352×480/576 MPEG-2 authored as DVD-Video with 48 kHz audio-fully DVD-compliant, used for VHS archives and packing several films per DVD.

mjpegtools’ anytovcd.sh script has a cvd profile that actually means half-D1 DVD (mpeg2enc -f 8, AC-3 at 48 kHz, up to 7,500 kbps, with SARs 20:11 / 59:27 for 4:3 or 80:33 / 236:81 for 16:9). That is “CVD-resolution DVD,” not a CD-based CVD. The naming collision causes confusion in tutorials and must be read carefully whenever a guide says “author CVD.”

DVD-Video and why 352 is legal

DVD-Video permits MPEG-2 at 720×480/576, 704×480/576, 352×480/576 and 352×240/288 (MPEG-1 is also allowed at 352×240/288). The 352×480/576 case is the half-D1 resolution C-Cube already supported in its CLM4400 encoder. Audio for DVD must be 48 kHz (LPCM, AC-3, MPEG audio or DTS), so the only change needed to move CVD video to DVD is audio resampling and DVD authoring (IFO/VOB structure). As one VideoHelp user put it: “CVD, if done correctly, complies to the DVD standard (low res DVD video streams).”

Master comparison

Format Status Video NTSC / PAL Typical ceiling Time / 80-min CD DVD-legal video
VCD 1.1/2.0 White Book (1993/1995) MPEG-1 CBR 352×240 / 352×288 1,150 kbps ~80 min Yes (audio no)
CVD C-Cube/OEM 1998; inside Chaoji VCD MPEG-2 VBR 352×480 / 352×576 ≤~2.6 Mbps (2.52 typical) 35-45 min Yes (audio no)
SVCD IEC 62107; SJ/T 11196 MPEG-2 VBR 480×480 / 480×576 ≤~2.6 Mbps 35-45 min No
HQ-VCD IEC 62107 variant MPEG-2 as SVCD as SVCD as SVCD No
XVCD / XSVCD Non-standard MPEG-1/2 VCD or SVCD (or other) above White Book / SVCD varies Depends
KVCD family Templates MPEG-1/2 e.g. 528×480, 352×240 low VBR claimed 120+ min KDVD yes
DVD-Video DVD Forum MPEG-2 (MPEG-1 allowed) 720/704/352×480; 352×240 ≤9.8 Mbps n/a (4.7 GB) –
EVD (2003) Chinese VP5/VP6 (On2) up to HD – n/a (DVD disc) No
CBHD (2009) Chinese AVS / H.264 / VC-1 up to 1080 up to ~28 Mbps video n/a (blue laser) No

CVD sits between VCD and SVCD on the CD-era ladder: same physical CD and roughly the same bitrate budget as SVCD, half-D1 instead of 2/3 D1 video, and a path into DVD-Video without re-encoding the pictures. Chaoji VCD is the Chinese player-compatibility umbrella that required both CVD and SVCD discs to play; IEC 62107 is the later international SVCD text that does not include CVD-style subtitles. Later Chinese formats-EVD and CBHD-repeat the political pattern of seeking domestic control over the next optical generation, but they leave the CD Form 2 world entirely. For collectors and archivists, the practical neighbour set is VCD for installed-base context, SVCD for file-system identity, HQ-VCD for the rare system-ID variant, and half-D1 DVD for the modern reuse of CVD’s resolution.

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:

Blog CBHD Codecs Guides
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CBHD Codecs Today: AVS, DRA and Tooling

Starting point

Pressed CBHD discs carried video and audio under Chinese and Western codec labels. Reconstructing or playing ripped material in 2026 depends less on finding a “CBHD player app” and more on whether modern open-source stacks can decode AVS video and DRA audio after the container and DRM layers are stripped. This post inventories what exists today, what is missing, and how those tools map onto the format’s commercial codec list.

AVS video on the open-source side

FFmpeg’s cavs decoder handles AVS1-P2 Jizhun (base) profile. Stefan Gehrer wrote it in 2006-before CBHD’s commercial launch-because AVS itself is older than the disc format. The AVS working group began first-generation work in 2002; AVS Part 2 video became national standard GB/T 20090.2-2006 in February 2006. For software archaeology that timing matters: a CBHD encoding tool may simply have been an AVS encoder feeding a proprietary mux/authoring system, not something branded “CBHD Encoder.”

Support for AVS+ (AVS1-P16, broadcasting profile) was proposed in a 2026 FFmpeg-devel RFC titled along the lines of “avcodec/cavs: bugfixes and AVS1-P16 (AVS+) decoding,” but that work is not yet merged. Encoding uses libxavs, available in FFmpeg builds configured with --enable-libxavs; Chinese CSDN guides document such builds. FFmpeg’s separate avs decoder is for an unrelated game video format and must not be confused with Chinese AVS. The name uAVS appeared as a search target in the research brief; no pass reported usable details.

What commercial CBHD actually put in the bitstream

Official CHDA documentation lists AVS, H.264/AVC, VC-1 and MPEG-2. Player specifications made AVS, MPEG-4 AVC and VC-1 mandatory. Early 2009 discs almost certainly used VC-1 or AVC because AVS content and encoders were not yet available at China Record; AVS and DKAA discs were presented as a “new generation” only at the September 2009 Guangzhou conference. An actual disc could therefore contain a conventional MPEG-2, H.264 or VC-1 stream even though later marketing emphasised AVS.

Technical traits reported for AVS as used on CBHD include compression efficiency comparable to H.264 High Profile with lower computational complexity; licensing about 1 RMB per decoder unit versus multi-dollar MPEG-LA structures; 8×8 integer transforms; quarter-pel motion-vector accuracy; context-adaptive spatial prediction; and its own loop filter. Typical CBHD encodes are described as 1080p at 23.976 or 24 fps, or 1080i at 50 Hz for domestic Chinese TV masters, at average bitrates of 12-18 Mbps under a format maximum video bitrate of 28 Mbps.

DRA audio: silicon IP and one thesis tree

DRA (standardised as SJ/T 11368-2006 and GB/T 22726-2008) was developed by DigiRise / Guangzhou Digital Rise Technology. Expansions of the acronym differ across sources-“Dynamic Resolution Adaptation” versus “Digital Rise Audio” after the developer. It is optional in Blu-ray from version 2.3. Reported capabilities include multi-channel compression using sub-band coding, psychoacoustic masking and MDCT; channel layouts from mono/stereo to 5.1 and 7.1; and bitrates from 64 kbps to 1.5 Mbps.

Commercial decoder IP: Synopsys DesignWare ARC Sound IP (2011, first to support DRA) and Tensilica HiFi Audio DSP library (2012). Open source: a DRA encoder/decoder from Tianyi Geng’s Tsinghua undergraduate thesis, published on GitHub as tianyigeng/DRA-Audio-System. No DRA decoder exists in mainline FFmpeg. For archival workflows that means DRA either goes through the thesis codec or through a conversion step before ordinary desktop players see the soundtrack.

Player-facing audio lists for context

  • Official specification: AVS Audio, DRA, Dolby AC-3.
  • Shinco CBHD-9100: AVS-Audio, LPCM, DRA, Dolby AC-3; coaxial digital and 5.1 analogue.
  • TCL THBD-1008: Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, PCM.

CBHD-HiFi (July 2010) used dual-layer capacity for multi-channel LPCM up to 24-bit/192 kHz over secure HDMI. That profile is a separate audio path from DRA compression and matters for identifying special collector editions from China Record Corporation.

Putting decoded streams into players

A decrypted CBHD AVS elementary stream should decode in FFmpeg-based players such as mpv, MPC-HC via LAV Filters, and probably VLC, provided the cavs path is available. Transcoding can use FFmpeg with libxavs when re-encoding is required. DRA still needs the thesis codec or conversion. No research pass found software that decrypts DKAA. International titles protected with AACS follow the AACS route rather than a CBHD-specific PC decryptor.

Standalone player USB paths remain relevant when discussing “home content” without disc authoring: the Shinco CBHD-9100 plays 1080p video files and TS/MP4 from USB with external subtitles; the Shinco HD-3700U plays AVI from USB and network shares. Those routes bypass FSM mastering entirely and are the only documented realistic home-content path on original hardware.

What is still missing

  1. Mainline FFmpeg DRA decoder.
  2. Merged AVS+ (AVS1-P16) support in cavs.
  3. Any public DKAA decryption tool.
  4. Documented uAVS encoder details usable for reconstruction.
  5. Confirmed PC application that mounts a pressed CBHD volume end-to-end (filesystem + CETC + DRM + decode).

ChatGPT pass 2 cautions that “there were no PC decoders” has not been proven as a historical absence; PC playback software and a CBHD emulator remain unresolved research targets rather than confirmed non-existence. For practical work today, treat AVS via cavs/libxavs and DRA via the thesis tree as the working open toolchain, and treat DKAA as a hard stop until keys and algorithms surface.

Codec archaeology versus disc archaeology

AVS and DRA outlived CBHD in Chinese broadcasting. AVS was re-engineered as AVS2 and AVS3; together with DRA they were mandated across terrestrial HD, 4K Ultra-HD and 8K state networks. That continuity means codec libraries and silicon IP continued after disc replication ended, but it does not automatically recover CBHD muxers, CETC navigation files or DKAA. Separating the problems helps: decode the elementary streams with tools that already exist; recover containers, navigation and DRM with disc images, firmware dumps and professional verifiers.

When a catalogue title is labelled “1080p AVS, DRA 5.1” in secondary reporting, treat that as a technical profile claim pending MediaInfo or bitstream confirmation. Early launch discs may not match that profile. When a title lists only Western codecs on a player menu screenshot, that is equally consistent with the 2009 encoder gap. Codec tooling today is strong enough to handle AVS Jizhun video once decrypted; audio and DRM remain the thinner layers of the stack.

Quick reference

Component Open tooling status
AVS1-P2 Jizhun decode FFmpeg cavs (2006)
AVS encode libxavs via FFmpeg
AVS+ RFC proposed; not merged
DRA decode/encode Thesis GitHub project; not in FFmpeg
DRA in silicon IP Synopsys ARC Sound (2011); Tensilica HiFi (2012)
DKAA No public decryptor found
AACS (international CBHD) Standard AACS research path

The next posts in this series cover standards numbers and patents, then hardware that actually ran these codecs in living rooms. Codec tooling without a disc image or firmware dump still leaves navigation and protection unresolved; codec tooling with those artefacts turns a sector dump into watchable video.

AVS as a system, not a single FourCC

The AVS organisation describes AVS1 as a full system covering system layer, video, audio, DRM and compliance testing. That breadth affects how researchers hunt tools: filenames may say AVS encoder, AVS muxer or compliance suite rather than CBHD. Part 2 video (GB/T 20090.2-2006) is the elementary stream FFmpeg’s cavs path targets. Broadcasting later moved to AVS+ and then AVS2/AVS3; those later profiles are not automatically present on 2009-2010 CBHD discs. Keeping profile names straight prevents false “unsupported CBHD” reports when the real issue is an AVS+ stream fed to a Jizhun-only decoder.

Licensing economics also explain why Chinese manufacturers preferred AVS on paper: about 1 RMB per decoder versus multi-dollar MPEG-LA stacks. Whether every pressed title actually shipped AVS is a separate empirical question. China Record’s lack of an AVS encoder in April 2009 and the September 2009 “new generation” AVS+DKAA unveiling are contemporaneous evidence that the codec story changed during the format’s short commercial life.

DRA beside Dolby on the same machines

Player marketing lists show DRA and Dolby families coexisting. The Shinco CBHD-9100 advertises DRA and AC-3 together with LPCM; the TCL THBD-1008 leans on Dolby Digital / Digital Plus / TrueHD and PCM in published specs. HDMI bitstream of DRA to Western AV receivers was reported as fragile on the HD-3700U because descriptors did not identify the payload. Desktop preservation therefore cannot assume “if the video decodes, the audio will follow in VLC”-DRA may need an offline conversion pass through the thesis codec before a standard media player sees PCM or AC-3.

Research targets still named but empty

uAVS encoders were on the original search brief; no pass returned usable documentation. Synopsys and Tensilica DRA IP proves silicon-level interest after 2011 but does not yield a Windows DLL for archivists. No pass found DKAA decryption code. AACS on international CBHD titles remains the better-documented protection path solely because AACS LA published a CBHD pre-recorded book (v0.90, 7 October 2008) rather than because those titles are easier to obtain.

Practical lab order: identify whether a given disc is domestic (DKAA) or international (AACS); extract after legal decrypt where applicable; demux; run cavs on AVS; route DRA through tianyigeng/DRA-Audio-System or transcode; archive both elementary streams and a transparent remux. USB playback on the CBHD-9100 remains available for non-DRM test encodes.

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: