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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:

Blog EVD Guides Technical Specifications
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EVD Technical Specifications

What can and cannot be specified

The full text of SJ/T 11299.1-4-2005 was not obtained for this research. The picture below is assembled from the standards platform record, 2003 and 2006 EE Times/EDN reporting, On2 SEC filings, Wikipedia (English, Chinese, Japanese) and E-World promotional material. Where a value comes only from alliance marketing it is labelled as such. Conflicting figures are kept side by side rather than forced into a single number.

120 mm DVD disc; EVD uses DVD-5 and DVD-9 media with a 650 nm red laser
EVD is not a new optical geometry: it uses standard 120 mm DVD discs and a 650 nm red laser. Photo: William Hook, CC BY-SA, via Openverse and Flickr.

Physical disc

Parameter Value Source
Diameter 120 mm English Wikipedia
Construction Two bonded 0.6 mm polycarbonate substrates, 1.2 mm total Japanese Wikipedia
Laser 650 nm (red) Japanese Wikipedia; TechRadar
Capacity 4.7 GB (DVD-5); 8.5 GB (DVD-9) Japanese Wikipedia
Relationship to DVD Is simply a DVD disc Chinese and English Wikipedia
Standard part SJ/T 11299.1 (disc) Standards platform sister record
Claimed playing time Two-hour HD movie on one disc / about 105 minutes of HD EDN 2003 / Zhang Baoquan

Manufacturing claims conflict. TechRadar (2006) and Baidu (HD-EVD, 2008) say production cost and process matched ordinary DVD and avoided expensive retooling. A 2019 Sohu retrospective says EVD discs needed single-sided multilayer processes much more complex than ordinary DVD. Both strands are kept. Playing-time claims (two hours versus about 105 minutes) are likewise left open.

Capacity and bitrate arithmetic

No official EVD video bitrate was published. The table below is calculation from the marketing claims, not documentation.

Case Calculation Implied average total bitrate
DVD-5, 2 hours (EDN) 4.7×10⁹ bytes × 8 ÷ 7,200 s ≈ 5.2 Mbit/s
DVD-9, 2 hours 8.5×10⁹ × 8 ÷ 7,200 ≈ 9.4 Mbit/s
DVD-9, 105 minutes 8.5×10⁹ × 8 ÷ 6,300 ≈ 10.8 Mbit/s
DVD-5, 105 minutes 4.7×10⁹ × 8 ÷ 6,300 ≈ 6.0 Mbit/s
DVD 1× channel / DVD-Video max mux 11.08 Mbit/s / 10.08 Mbit/s DVD-Video spec

E-World claimed EVD raises the stream rate by nearly double over DVD. An MPEG-2 1080i stream at 5-11 Mbit/s would sit well below period broadcast HD rates (typically 15-19 Mbit/s for ATSC MPEG-2). If the two-hour claim and EE Times’ MPEG-2 MP@HL description are both correct, commercial titles were heavily compressed, often 720p, or both. None of this is confirmed by a measured disc.

File system and data structure

Item Detail
File system UDF, as DVD
Standard part SJ/T 11299.2-2005 高密度数字激光视盘文件系统规范
Drafting units Beijing E-World; Jiangsu Shinco Electronics Group
Named drafters 徐翔, 秦志尚
Directory names / VIDEO_TS relationship Not documented in retrieved sources

This is the largest public gap. Mounting a genuine EVD disc in a PC DVD drive and listing the UDF tree would document the directory structure for the first time in an English-language source. An academic paper, Comparisons of EVD and DVD (Communication University of China), emphasises logic structure but only an abstract was retrieved.

Video codec: the central dispute

Position Source Date
Will use On2 VP5 and VP6 EDN (Junko Yoshida) 18 Nov 2003
Launch players used MPEG-2 MP@HL-based encoding on LSI Logic; On2 an alternative; long-term AVS EE Times (Clendenin) Nov 2003
EVD uses MPEG-2 MP@HL secured with proprietary encryption EE Times (Cai Yan) Nov 2006
Improved MPEG-2 coding with LSI; no Chinese chip supplier Chinese Wikipedia 2005 snapshot
Original plan was VP5/VP6 English Wikipedia (undated summary)
VP6 port to contract DSPs never completed; minimum royalties not triggered On2 SEC filings 2005-2009
Patents concern filter transforms and encode/decode optimisation E-World via PjTime 2007
Relies on China’s AVS (unsupported by other sources) Grokipedia 2026

Reading of the evidence from methodical cross-checking: the On2 licence was real and partly paid, but On2’s filings show VP6 was never ported to the chips in shipping players. Two EE Times reports three years apart, plus Chinese Wikipedia’s improved MPEG-2 wording, point to MPEG-2 MP@HL-derived video with proprietary pre/post-processing and encryption. AVS was a declared future direction (2003 and September 2005) with no documented AVS-based EVD player. That conclusion should still be tested against SJ/T 11299.3 or a real disc. All codec positions remain open disagreements until then.

Resolutions and output

E-World claimed 1920×1080i and 1280×720p, 16:9, more than 720 TV lines, and eight quality levels from VCD to HD. Players passed MII’s HD test in September 2004. Marketing contrasted true HD (source, disc, player and output all HD) with upscaling fake HD DVD players. 1080p discs were promised by end of 2007 and reappeared as HD-EVD output claims in 2008. The Shinco EVD-8700 offered component (YPbPr) HD output.

Audio, subtitles and protection

Audio. ExAC / EAC (Enhanced Audio Codec) is specified in SJ/T 11299.4 as a multichannel surround enhanced audio codec: mono, stereo and 5.1, claimed better than Dolby AC-3 at the same bitrate, with an MII listening-test score of 4.7/5 marketed as 0.2 above Dolby. Bitrates were not published. An AC3-EAC conversion tool implies titles were typically transcoded from existing Dolby Digital masters. English Wikipedia attributes EAC 2.0 to Coding Technologies; Chinese sources and the MII part-4 title treat it as E-World’s own codec. Both origin stories are kept.

Subtitles. E-World describes 256-colour floating overlays with transparency, inherited from Super VCD research and superior to DVD’s four-colour sub-pictures. One of five E-World software packages was an OGT authoring system.

Protection. Shipping scheme: proprietary encryption (EE Times 2006). Marketing claimed a 128-bit key that passed Hollywood testing (unverified). Jindian Global announced AACS for new titles on 11 December 2005; no documentation was found that any EVD title actually shipped with AACS. LSI DoMiNo product briefs list CSS/CPRM/CPPM/DES capability, which shows silicon features, not EVD’s actual scheme.

Menus, compatibility and tooling

No primary documentation of EVD menus, navigation commands or region coding was found. CBS/Xinhua launch coverage mentioned no region code. Backward compatibility was marketed across DVD, Super VCD, VCD, CD and MP3; the EVD-8700 also listed CD-R/RW, JPEG and AC-3/DTS decoding for DVD. E-World named five professional software packages (DVD-to-EVD conversion, AC3-EAC conversion, OGT authoring, disc mastering, PC player); none has been found in a public archive.

Next-generation plans that did not ship

Plan Detail Status
AVS-based EVD Agreement 26 Sep 2005 No product found
H.264 EVD E-World-ST letter of intent, 2 Jul 2005 No product found
VMD-EVD NME multilayer red-laser; 50 GB shown at CeBIT Mar 2006 No mass release
1080p / HD-EVD Promised end 2007; 2008 rename Slipped; no model numbers found

Working specification summary

Until SJ/T 11299.3 is obtained or a commercial disc is imaged, treat the following as the practical technical envelope for research and collecting:

  • Physical: red-laser 120 mm DVD-5 or DVD-9; not Blu-ray, not HD DVD capacity.
  • File system: UDF; directory layout unknown in English secondary sources.
  • Video (most likely shipping): MPEG-2 MP@HL-derived stream with proprietary encryption and possible E-World pre/post filters; On2 VP5/VP6 licensed but not completed on shipping DSPs.
  • Resolutions claimed: 1080i and 720p output; eight quality levels advertised; 1080p for late HD-EVD claims.
  • Audio: ExAC/EAC mono, stereo or 5.1; often mastered via AC-3 conversion.
  • Subtitles: 256-colour floating overlays from Super VCD OGT research.
  • Protection: proprietary encryption in shipping titles; AACS announced, not documented on discs.
  • Players: LSI Logic DoMiNo-class decoders; backward play of DVD/SVCD/VCD/CD/MP3.

Bitrate arithmetic from marketing claims implies roughly 5-11 Mbit/s total. That is calculation, not a measured bitstream. Manufacturing complexity (same as DVD versus more complex multilayer) remains an open disagreement between contemporary Western/HD-EVD marketing and a 2019 Chinese retrospective.

What a real disc would settle

Anyone holding a commercial EVD disc can close several gaps in one afternoon: mount the UDF tree and photograph the top-level directories; sample a programme stream and identify the video start codes and elementary stream types; note whether audio looks like a proprietary ExAC/EAC framing or a renamed conventional stream; and test whether the encryption prevents a naïve sector dump from yielding playable media on a PC without E-World’s licensed player. Until those observations exist in English, secondary sources will keep recycling launch-week claims. This post therefore ends as a research brief as much as a specification sheet: firm on physical DVD identity and LSI-era playback reports, deliberately open on directory layout, exact bitrates and the precise boundary between MPEG-2 and proprietary filtering.

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 Technical Specifications
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CVD Technical Specifications

What can and cannot be specified

The original C-Cube/consortium CVD specification is not publicly available, and the full text of SJ/T 11196-1998 was not obtained for this research. Almost every published CVD “specification” is therefore inferred from SVCD (Philips SVCD 1.0 / IEC 62107 / the Chinese Super VCD regime) plus the known resolution and subtitle differences. Values below are marked as directly attested for CVD where the 1998 Chinese press or Western tooling documentation says so, and otherwise inherited from the SVCD stack that CVD shares.

Physical disc and sector formats

A CVD is a standard 120 mm CD or CD-R using the CD-ROM XA / CD-i Bridge layout defined in the White Book. Track 1 is Mode 2 Form 1 with an ISO 9660 file system holding the metadata files (INFO, ENTRIES, PSD, LOT, SEARCH, TRACKS) and, optionally, the segment play-item area. Tracks 2 onwards are Mode 2 Form 2 MPEG tracks, one per sequence (up to 98). Form 1 sectors carry 2,048 bytes of user data with EDC and Layer-2 ECC; Form 2 sectors carry 2,324 bytes with EDC but no Layer-2 ECC-about 14% more payload. Guangming Daily’s 3 November 1998 comparison states that CVD and SVCD were “completely identical in physical format and file format, both following the relevant international and national standards.”

Disc anatomy follows the VCDImager description of Super Video CD layout: lead-in and TOC; a mandatory 150-sector pregap; an ISO 9660 track with the Primary Volume Descriptor at LSN 16 and the VCD info area at 00:04:00; an optional segment area of up to 1,980 segments of 150 sectors; then the MPEG Form 2 tracks, each preceded by a pregap of at least 150 sectors; a 150-sector postgap; and the lead-out. CVD players used 2× mechanisms; Guangming Daily associates CVD hardware with a Philips double-speed mechanism and CD7 digital servo, against a Sony double-speed mechanism on the SVCD side in the same comparison.

Capacity, data rate and playing time

Quantity Result
Raw 2× Form 2 throughput 150 sectors/s × 2,324 bytes × 8 ≈ 2,788.8 kbps
80-minute CD-R capacity (Form 2) ≈ 836.6 MB (≈ 798 MiB)
74-minute CD-R capacity (Form 2) ≈ 773.9 MB
Playing time at full 2×, 80-min blank ≈ 40 min (less ISO track and gaps)
Playing time at full 2×, 74-min blank ≈ 37 min
At ~1,800 kbps video + 224 kbps audio ≈ 53 min on an 80-min blank

The raw 2× figure explains why the combined audio-video ceiling is usually quoted as about 2.7 Mbps (Wikipedia) or 2,778 kbps (technical summaries). The ubiquitous “35-45 minutes per disc” figure is simply CD capacity read at 2×. Longer programmes need lower average VBR rates, typically 1.5-2.0 Mbps for sixty to eighty minutes.

Video and audio parameters

Parameter CVD value Basis
Codec MPEG-2, Main Profile @ Main Level 1998 press (“same decompression technology as DVD”); Western references
Resolution (NTSC) 352×480 at 29.97 fps Wikipedia; DeVeDe FAQ; VideoHelp
Resolution (PAL/SECAM) 352×576 at 25 fps same
Film content 23.976 fps with 3:2 pulldown flags Inherited from SVCD
Also permitted in 1998 2/3 D1 (480-wide) sources Guangming Daily 3 Nov 1998
Rate control VBR (CBR allowed) Guangming Daily; inherited
Maximum video rate ≈ 2,600 kbps (2,516-2,520 in practical recipes) Inherited; ffmpeg SVCD preset; SatStorm
VBV buffer 1,835,008 bits (224 KiB) in ffmpeg’s SVCD preset; 230 KB in mplex Tool defaults
Aspect ratio 4:3 or 16:9 (anamorphic) Inherited

Whether CVD was strictly 352-wide or also allowed 480-wide video is not settled. Western sources define CVD by its 352 width. Guangming Daily says CVD “suits both 1/2 D1 and 2/3 D1” sources while SVCD suited only 2/3 D1. Both claims are kept. Pixels per bit favour CVD: 352×576 is 202,752 pixels per frame against SVCD’s 480×576 at 276,480, so at the same bitrate CVD spends roughly a third more bits per pixel. That is the engineering argument for the format. Marketing-era horizontal resolution claims ranged from “up to 400 lines” (makers, July 1998) and “350-400 lines” (Jinzheng) to “about 280 lines” for early 1/2 D1 discs in a December 1998 Wenzhai Bao piece written from a pro-SVCD framing.

Audio is MPEG-1 Layer II at 44.1 kHz, typically 224 kbps within a 32-384 kbps range inherited from SVCD documentation. Up to two stereo or four mono tracks were marketed for karaoke (vocal/instrumental) or four language dubs. MPEG-2 multichannel 5.1 is allowed in the SVCD family but rarely supported; Guangming Daily notes that a “5.1-channel CVD scheme” had already been announced by November 1998. One AnandTech forum user in 2002 described CVD as “basically an SVCD with 352 × 240 VCD resolution and 48 KHz audio.” Every other source gives 352×480/576 and 44.1 kHz. VideoHelp users report that some players accept 48 kHz on CD and some play it too slowly (a Sony S560D is named). Both strands are kept. For DVD use, 44.1 kHz audio is not legal and must be resampled to 48 kHz.

File system, metadata and MPEG constraints

CVD uses the SVCD directory tree. From the GNU VCDImager manual the important paths are /SVCD/INFO.SVD (system ID “SUPERVCD”), ENTRIES.SVD, LOT.SVD, PSD.SVD, SEARCH.DAT, TRACKS.SVD, plus /MPEG2/ (or legacy /MPEGAV/) sequence tracks, /SEGMENT/ play items, and optional /EXT/ scan or caption files. VCDImager lists “SUPERVCD” as the INFO.SVD system ID for SVCD, XVCD and CVD, and “HQ-VCD” for HQ-VCD. There is no documented CVD-only identifier. Wenzhai Bao’s December 1998 report that CVD and SVCD players used different “disc identifiers” (识别码) to lock each other out suggests proprietary variants existed in practice, but no documentation of those identifiers was found.

Chinese legacy variants documented in VCDImager’s svcd vcd30 build options include the non-compliant /MPEGAV folder (EnReach I-Author) instead of /MPEG2, the deprecated ENTRYSVD signature, and a “chinese /SVCD/TRACKS.SVD format which differs from the format defined in the IEC-62107 specification.” The vcd-info tool also contains a heuristic “CVD interpretation (probably)” when parsing TRACKS.SVD, confirming that real CVD discs were seen with a distinct TRACKS layout.

Programme streams must be packed in 2,324-byte packs aligned to sector boundaries. Every I-frame must be preceded by a GOP header and a sequence header in the same sector, or entry points and scan tables break. SVCD requires scan-information user data in every I-picture so players can fast-forward and rewind; encoders write placeholders and VCDImager fills them with --update-scan-offsets. Official SVCD streams should signal 540 (4:3) or 720 (16:9) in the display horizontal size field; what CVD streams should carry here is undocumented. Peaks above the 2× ceiling cause stutter on real players even when a software compliance check passes.

Subtitles, menus and “protection”

CVD’s subtitles are the one on-disc feature besides resolution that most clearly separates it from IEC SVCD. CVD-style bitmaps travel in MPEG-PS private_stream_1; they are interlaced 2-bit RLE with a four-entry YUV palette plus highlight palette, metadata after the image data, and up to four streams. They are not in IEC 62107. SVCD OGT (Overlay Graphics and Text) uses Philips’ layout with private_data_id 0x70 and sub-stream IDs selecting channels 0-3; VCDImager notes that OGT is “sadly not part of the IEC62107 specs” either, even though it is the Philips SVCD format. VCDImager’s CVD subtitle documentation was reverse-engineered from submux sample code and “a couple of samples of dubious origin,” documenting tags for duration (0x04), coordinates (0x17/0x1f), palettes (0x24-0x27, 0x2c-0x2f), transparency and even/odd row offsets. VLC’s MPEG-PS demuxer is widely understood to map private_stream_1 sub-IDs 0x00-0x03 to CVD subtitles and 0x70-0x73 to SVCD OGT; that mapping was not confirmed from VLC source in the material used here. The 1998 makers marketed “four languages and four on-screen text choices” and “high-definition overlay subtitles.”

Menus inherit SVCD playback control: play lists, selection lists, end lists and (SVCD-only) command lists, with entry points in ENTRIES.SVD acting as chapters. Menu stills are MPEG-2 stills in the segment area at 480×480/576 or high-resolution 704×480/576 under SVCD rules. Makers described this as “two-way interactive playback control” (双向交互式控播); Guangming Daily said SVCD’s VCD 3.0 compatibility gave it an edge in interactivity.

CVD had no documented copy-protection system of its own-no CSS-style encryption, no region code and no Macrovision flag in the standards. The only documented “protection” is the 1998-1999 practice of adding proprietary identifiers and interference codes (干扰数码) so rival makers’ players could not read discs, and the counter-practice of fitting decryption components to players. These were compatibility weapons, not anti-piracy measures. The exact mechanism-modified INFO fields, deliberate errors, or non-standard TRACKS/ENTRIES data-is undocumented.

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 Technical Specifications
, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
CBHD Technical Specifications

Physical disc geometry

CBHD kept the 12 cm diameter and the DVD-like structure of two 0.6 mm polycarbonate substrates bonded back to back, giving a 0.6 mm cover layer above the data layer. It did not adopt Blu-ray’s thinner 0.1 mm cover and 0.85 NA lens. Physically the disc resembles an HD DVD disc. Optical readout uses a head capable of differential phase detection tracking.

CHDA comparison: CBHD vs DVD vs Blu-ray

Parameter CBHD DVD Blu-ray
Laser 405 nm Red (650 nm) 405 nm
Numerical aperture 0.65 0.60 0.85
Single layer 15 GB 4.7 GB 25 GB
Dual layer 30 GB 8.5 GB 50 GB
Maximum resolution 1080p 576p 1080p
Track pitch 0.40 μm 0.74 μm 0.32 μm
Minimum pit 0.204 μm ~0.40 μm ~0.149 μm
Modulation 4-6 FSM EFM(+) BD modulation
File system UDF UDF UDF
1× data rate 36.55 Mbps – –
Max video bitrate 28 Mbps – –

CBHD vs HD DVD vs Blu-ray (codec and DRM view)

Parameter CBHD HD DVD Blu-ray
Cover substrate 0.6 mm 0.6 mm 0.1 mm
Primary video AVS (GB/T 20090.2) VC-1, H.264, MPEG-2 H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2
Primary audio DRA (GB/T 22726) DD+, DTS-HD, LPCM TrueHD, DTS-HD MA, LPCM
Copy protection DKAA / AACS derivative AACS AACS, BD+
Navigation CETC Advanced Content (iHD/XML) HDMV / BD-J

Laser wavelength, NA, track pitch, minimum pit length and capacities match HD DVD’s physical envelope. Error-correction details remain undocumented across the research passes. Early presumption that CBHD matched HD DVD’s NA 0.65 and 0.40 μm pitch was later confirmed from the archived CHDA technical page.

Why DVD factories could convert

Because recording-layer geometry stayed close to DVD, Chinese plants could modify existing DVD lines instead of building a Blu-ray production ecosystem. Plants in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou needed upgrades such as a 405 nm mastering laser and spin-coater retrofits for denser pit geometry. A secondary unverified source puts line conversion near US$800,000 versus about $3 million for Blu-ray. Memory-Tech independently confirmed the strategy and built a complete CBHD production system through UOD.

Modulation: 4-6 FSM

CBHD replaced HD DVD’s 8-12 ETM with 4-6 FSM. Chinese industry reporting (Sina Tech, 3 April 2009) names this as one of three major changes, made “to add Chinese patents.” The Shinco CBHD-9100 specification advertises China’s proprietary 4-6 modulation coding. A 2008 Gizmodo piece described a CH-DVD player as essentially an HD DVD player “whose laser is set at a different modulation,” able to share processors and optical pickups in manufacturing.

The VCD analogy breaks here. VCD could be authored onto CD-R with ordinary burners. A pressed CBHD needs correct logical structure, premaster, CBHD physical encoding with 4-6 modulation, error-correction/channel structure, blue-laser mastering and replication. A DVD burner cannot simply be told to “burn this CBHD ISO”: the disc may be UDF, but UDF is not the physical format. A later Novatek servo DSP (NT90912) supported FSM alongside ETM, EFM+ and EFM, showing dedicated hardware support for the channel.

File system and disc structure

Chinese comparison tables explicitly identify UDF, which makes preservation more tractable than inventing a file system from zero. Descriptions of what sits on top of UDF differ between research passes:

  • Exact UDF version and containers not verified; UDF 2.5 and EVO/MPEG-PS are likely but unconfirmed given HD DVD derivation.
  • The DCA verifier validates China HD content against HD DVD Book 3 1.x with supplemental information, including EVOB, HDi content, Full Trust and Restricted Mode-implying HD DVD logical structures with Chinese extensions.
  • Another model places elementary AVS video and DRA audio in MPEG-2 Transport or Program Streams under a CBHD_TS volume directory (or HVDVD_TS on early CH-DVD transition discs), with a CBHD_TS.IFO stream map.

None of the passes cites a directory dump of a real CBHD disc. Relatively understood items include UDF as the filesystem label, 12 cm geometry, 15/30 GB capacity, 405 nm / 0.65 NA, 4-6 FSM as a concept, and the codec list. Still requiring direct disc investigation: exact UDF layout, directory conventions, EVOB usage, playlist and navigation files, CETC implementation details, DKAA structures and keys, sector-level differences, lead-in/lead-out, error correction, and exact Book 2 / Book 3 relationship to HD DVD.

Three software layers on a commercial disc

  1. Application: media assets and scripts; video in AVS; audio in DRA or LPCM; menus and multi-angle via CETC.
  2. Container / system stream: AVS and DRA elementary streams multiplexed into MPEG-2 TS or PS under CBHD_TS.
  3. Cryptographic protection: DKAA between UDF and decoders; authenticity checks; key exchange with player hardware; HDCP over HDMI.

CETC navigation

CBHD replaced HD DVD’s Advanced Content (HDi/iHD-XML, ECMAScript and SMIL) with CETC navigation. CHDA material lists dual highlight regions in menus, preview/summarised content, audio associated with the highlighted selection, and DVD-like multi-angle, multiple audio and subtitle tracks. The design kept some DVD-like interface behaviour without a Java virtual machine (unlike Blu-ray BD-J) or heavy XML parsers. A first-generation CETC bug on the Shinco HD-3700U caused pause on native CBHD to break frame sync; the TCL THBD-1038 is described as carrying an updated CETC engine. Even with UDF, video, audio and subtitles in hand, a playable CBHD still needs the CETC environment the player expects.

Video and audio codecs

Official CHDA documentation lists AVS, H.264/AVC, VC-1 and MPEG-2; player specs made AVS, MPEG-4 AVC and VC-1 mandatory. Player lists:

  • Shinco CBHD-9100: AVS-Video, VC-1, MPEG-4, AVC; JPEG; outputs 1080p/i, 720p, 480p.
  • TCL THBD-1008: VC-1, H.264, MPEG-4, MPEG-2; 1080p/24.
  • Shinco HD-3700U: AVS, MPEG-2, DVD-Video, EVD, HVD, SVCD, VCD; AVI from USB.

Early 2009 discs almost certainly used VC-1 or AVC because AVS encoders were not yet available at China Record; AVS and DKAA discs were presented as a “new generation” only in September 2009. One research pass states video was encoded exclusively in AVS; others say discs could and early discs likely did use VC-1/AVC.

AVS Part 2 video became national standard GB/T 20090.2-2006 in February 2006 after working-group work from 2002. AVS1 is a full system-system, video, audio, DRM and compliance-not only a video codec. Technical traits cited for CBHD use: efficiency comparable to H.264 High Profile with lower complexity; licensing about 1 RMB per decoder; 8×8 integer transforms, quarter-pel motion vectors, context-adaptive spatial prediction and its own loop filter; typical encodes 1080p at 23.976/24 fps or 1080i at 50 Hz, averages 12-18 Mbps.

Official audio lists AVS Audio, DRA and Dolby AC-3. Shinco CBHD-9100 adds LPCM and 5.1 output. TCL THBD-1008 lists Dolby Digital, Digital Plus, TrueHD and PCM. DRA is standardised as SJ/T 11368-2006 and GB/T 22726-2008 (DigiRise / Guangzhou Digital Rise Technology); optional in Blu-ray from version 2.3. Expansions of the acronym differ: “Dynamic Resolution Adaptation” versus “Digital Rise Audio.” Multi-channel sub-band/MDCT coding from mono/stereo to 5.1/7.1 and bitrates from 64 kbps to 1.5 Mbps are reported. CBHD-HiFi (July 2010) used dual-layer 30 GB for multi-channel LPCM up to 24-bit/192 kHz over secure HDMI; China Record music documentaries appear as HiFi special editions.

DKAA, AACS, region and packaging

CBHD-3D specifications and products launched in Beijing in July 2010; by that month only one 3D title existed; Guangzhou Asian Games ceremonies were planned for 3D release. What Hi-Fi covered the move under the headline that HD-DVD was “back” in 3D. Packaging used black Blu-ray-size cases originally designed for HD-VMD, carrying a blue CBHD logo; the DVD Forum’s “HD DVD China” logo had been approved in November 2007. Region coding remains poorly attested across passes.

Understood versus still needing a disc

ChatGPT pass 2’s checklist remains the practical guide for laboratory work. Relatively understood: UDF as the labelled filesystem, twelve-centimetre geometry, 15/30 GB capacities, 405 nm laser, 0.65 NA, 4-6 FSM as a concept, AVS and the Western video codecs, DRA and Dolby AC-3, and the existence of CETC and DKAA as named systems. Still requiring direct disc investigation: exact CBHD UDF layout and identifiers, directory conventions, exact EVOB usage, playlist structure, navigation files and CETC binaries, DKAA structures and keys, sector-level differences from HD DVD, lead-in/lead-out implementation, error-correction details, and the precise relationship between CBHD Books 2/3 and HD DVD Books 2/3. Owning an actual CBHD disc therefore becomes extremely valuable for reconstruction.

Understood versus still needing a disc on the bench

ChatGPT pass 2’s checklist remains the practical guide for laboratory work. Relatively understood: UDF as the labelled filesystem, twelve-centimetre geometry, 15/30 GB capacities, 405 nm laser, 0.65 NA, 4-6 FSM as a concept, AVS and the Western video codecs, DRA and Dolby AC-3, and the existence of CETC and DKAA as named systems. Still requiring direct disc investigation: exact CBHD UDF layout and identifiers, directory conventions, exact EVOB usage, playlist structure, navigation files and CETC binaries, DKAA structures and keys, sector-level differences from HD DVD, lead-in/lead-out implementation, error-correction details, and the precise relationship between CBHD Books 2/3 and HD DVD Books 2/3. Owning an actual CBHD disc is extremely valuable for reconstruction.

Packaging used black Blu-ray-size cases originally designed for HD-VMD, carrying a blue CBHD logo. The DVD Forum’s separate “HD DVD China” logo had been approved in November 2007. Region coding remains poorly attested. Domestic films used DKAA; international films used AACS.

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 History
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EVD History: From DVD Royalties to CBHD

Why China built EVD

By the early 2000s China was the world’s DVD player factory. Contemporary reports put 2002 production near 30 million units, with about 20 million exported and Chinese makers holding up to 70 percent of the global market. The industrial problem was royalties. Chinese sources put 6C pool fees at more than ten US dollars per domestic player and more than US$20 per export unit; Unitalen reprints US$13.8 domestic; English Wikipedia gives $13-$20 including CSS, Macrovision and MPEG-2. E-World later claimed China paid about US$1.2 billion a year in patent fees. Those figures disagree and are kept side by side. An E-World executive framed EVD’s purpose bluntly: so the next generation of disc players would not repeat the domestic DVD industry’s mistakes, and so China could steer its own HD direction.

1999: Beijing E-World

Research began in 1999. Chinese Wikipedia says Shinco, SVA and others jointly founded Beijing E-World Digital Technology. People’s Daily reported that the government contributed ¥10 million, about one quarter of R&D costs, and that the consortium charged ¥500,000 in licensing fees plus US$2 per player. Shareholder and alliance lists vary: E-World’s FAQ names Konka, Shinco, BBK, Amoi, Malata and SVA; English Wikipedia and c114 give longer nine-member sets. All are kept as open disagreements. Hao Jie (郝杰) led E-World and rejected the Super DVD label, pitching a modular information-appliance platform. Technical appraisal dates conflict: end of 2001 (c114, Zhang Baoquan, E-World FAQ) versus early 2002 (PjTime/ZOL reprints).

2003: On2, LSI Logic and the Great Hall launch

On2 Technologies signed EVD and non-EVD VP5/VP6 licences effective 21 June 2003 at US$2 per player with no per-disc royalty. LSI Logic announced itself as the first semiconductor supplier of high-definition EVD technology on its DoMiNo architecture. On 18 November 2003 EVD was unveiled at the Great Hall of the People. Eleven models from nine makers (Amoi, BBK, Changhong, Malata, Nintaus, Shinco, SVA, Skyworth, Yuxing) were named; players were to cost about ¥2,000; organisers hoped to attack DVD market share. Hao Jie projected up to 1.8 million players in 2004, three million in 2005 and nine million in 2006.

Same-week trade press already disagreed on the codec. EDN said EVD would use VP5 and VP6. EE Times said launch players employed MPEG-2 Main Profile @ High Level based encoding on LSI chips, with On2 an alternative option and AVS the long-term target. EE Times also noted from day one that DVD playback would still trigger DVD royalties. Both codec readings are kept.

2004: slow start

The Shinco EVD-8700 reached retail on 1 January 2004 at ¥1,998. For months it was effectively the only machine in stores; c114 recorded that only Shinco and SVA among the nine mainstream makers actually put EVD on the market. June 2004 brought a Dazhong EVD HD experience hall and a cut to ¥1,698; later promotions reached ¥998 with bundled discs. Players passed MII’s HD test in September 2004. Jindian Group and E-World formed Beijing Jindian Global with ¥200 million capital; the first release was fourteen titles. Rival red-laser camps launched the same year: Kaicheng’s HDV in January and Amlogic-backed HVD in April, with some brands sitting in two camps. Reported 2004 sales were about 200,000 players against Hao’s 1.8 million forecast. On2 filed LCIA arbitration on 3 May 2004 over unpaid fees and minimum royalties.

2005: SJ/T standard and arbitration

On 18 February 2005 SJ/T 11299-2005 was recorded as released and implemented; Chinese press dates the MII approval notice to 22 or 23 February. Western headlines called it a national standard; Chinese sources are more precise: it is an electronics-industry recommended (SJ/T) standard, not a GB national standard. Both wordings are kept. Sales ticked up briefly at chains such as Dazhong, but HD TVs still cost around ¥10,000 and discs remained scarce. Zhang Baoquan promised discs at ¥3-5; street prices stayed ¥18-28.

On 10 March 2005 the LCIA arbitrator dismissed On2’s claims. On2’s filings say minimum royalties were conditional on porting VP6 to two jointly selected DSPs, and that port was never completed. English Wikipedia instead says the claims failed primarily because few players were produced. Either way, VP6 never became the working codec of shipping EVD players. Later in 2005 E-World signed letters of intent for H.264 (STMicroelectronics), VMD multilayer discs (NME) and AVS-based next-generation EVD; none reached the market. Jindian Global announced AACS for new titles on 11 December 2005, fearing E-World’s licensed PC player would leak protection, while AACS itself was not yet final.

2006 crisis and Beijing Declaration

By late 2006 EE Times put roughly 700,000 EVD players in the market against about 20 million DVD players sold yearly in China. Li Hai of E-World had given 300,000-400,000 for 2005 sales; AFP later quoted Zhang with a conflicting 700,000 last year figure. Patent-pledge and Hao Jie rumours damaged confidence. HVD outsold EVD by as much as ten to one in some months. Suning refused to stock EVD as fake HD. Defections toward HD DVD began among alliance brands.

On 6 December 2006 the China EVD Industry Alliance issued the Beijing Declaration. Counts disagree: 18-20 makers and 51-54 players at about ¥700, framed as concentrating China’s red-laser industry against Japanese blue-laser standards, with 1080p discs promised by end of 2007. AP noted that an earlier promotion push had been dropped after 2004. Plans for Gome EVD stores and online outlets were announced; the commercial rebound did not materialise.

2007-2008 collapse and legacy

By August 2007 Nanfang Daily collected headlines that the alliance existed in name only and that sales were dismal. In 2008 Baidu records an HD-EVD rename with claimed 1080p output, ~¥1,000 players and ¥15-30 discs; no model numbers were found. English Wikipedia dates the last new hardware to 2008. Shinco, the EVD盟主, later moved to Tsinghua-backed CBHD. Around 2011-2012 Yicai reported Shinco under Changzhou government custody for restructuring, years after the first EVD.

Why it failed

  • No royalty escape: sellable players still played DVD, so 6C/3C fees remained (EE Times 2003 and 2006).
  • No content: roughly 14 titles in mid-2004 and about 100 by late 2006, mostly from one disc maker, against cheap pirate DVD compilations.
  • No visible benefit on ordinary TVs: HD sets were expensive; the EVD/DVD difference was hard to see on SD screens.
  • Divided domestic camp: EVD, HVD and HDV fought each other; some brands sat in two camps.
  • Internal conflict: On2 arbitration, E-World vs Jindian over PC playback and AACS, NME share-swap accusations, patent-pledge rumours.
  • Single chip source: only LSI Logic supplied EVD decoders (iSuppli via EE Times).
  • Blue laser arrived: HD DVD and Blu-ray launched in 2006; makers defected toward HD DVD and then CBHD.

Lineage to CBHD

EVD sits between CVD / Super VCD on CD and CBHD on blue-laser HD DVD-derived media: White Book VCD to CVD/SVCD (SJ/T 11196) to EVD (SJ/T 11299) to CBHD. EE Times already compared EVD to China’s earlier VCD-to-Super-VCD pattern. E-World itself said EVD subtitles inherited Super VCD research. English Wikipedia lists CBHD as a follow-on to EVD based on HD DVD technology. The optical jump from red-laser DVD to blue-laser CBHD closed the red-laser HD experiment that EVD embodied.

Market numbers in one place

Measure Figure Source note
2004 forecast Up to 1.8 million players Hao Jie, People’s Daily
2004 actual ~200,000 Li Hai to EE Times
2005 actual 300,000-400,000 Li Hai to EE Times
Installed base, Nov 2006 ~700,000 in the market EE Times
Conflicting 700,000 claim Sold “last year” (2005) AFP quoting Zhang; conflicts with Li Hai
China DVD market ~20 million players a year iSuppli via EE Times
Disc prices ¥18-28 typical; ¥3-5 promised (2005); ¥15-30 HD-EVD claim Kept as open disagreement with promise

Those sales envelopes are why the 2006 Beijing Declaration’s talk of replacing DVD by 2008 reads as industrial theatre in retrospect. The format had government notices, a chip vendor, a content company and retail experience halls. It never had enough titles, enough HD televisions in homes, or an escape from DVD royalties once players had to remain DVD-compatible to sell.

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 History
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CVD History: From VCD Boom to Chaoji VCD

Industrial background: the VCD boom, 1993-1998

China Video Disc only makes sense against the scale of the Chinese Video CD market that preceded it. White Book VCD, defined in 1993 by Sony, Philips, JVC and Matsushita, put MPEG-1 video at 352×240 (NTSC) or 352×288 (PAL) on an ordinary CD. It never caught on in the West, but it swept mainland China, Hong Kong and South-East Asia.

The Chinese industry traces its origin to Hefei in September 1993, when Jiang Wanmeng (姜万勐) and C-Cube chairman Edmund Sun (孙燕生) built the first VCD player, sold under the brand Wanyan 万燕. The first 1,000 units at ¥4,000-5,000 each were reportedly bought up by other electronics makers as reference samples. Wanyan did not patent the complete player, and competitors copied it. By 1996 secondary sources count around 600 VCD makers in China, about fifty of them significant, with combined capacity near twelve million units a year. Guangdong dominated assembly; contemporary histories describe “bed-board factories” (床板工厂) where families assembled dozens of players a day from grey-market parts.

Annual sales figures differ widely and none of the commonly cited totals cite primary audited data. One Chinese retrospective puts 1995 at 600,000, 1996 at more than six million, 1997 at ten million and cumulative sales by about 1998 near fifty million; Aho instead gives “less than one million,” 6.5 million and an estimated 18-20 million for those years. A 2004 Sina Tech retrospective calls 1998 the peak at fourteen million units. All versions are kept. A brutal price war followed Aido’s cuts in late 1996-1997; marketing escalated to CCTV “advertising king” (标王) auctions, including Aido’s Jackie Chan “爱多VCD好功夫” campaign at a reported ¥4.5 million. By early 1998 Guangming Daily reported the fight shifting to after-sales membership schemes at Malata and Aido.

C-Cube sat at the centre of this market. Its FY1997 10-K states that VideoCD had “mass market adoption exclusively in China,” that international revenue was 65% of net revenue “due primarily to sales of MPEG-1 decoder products in Asia,” and that one customer alone accounted for 20% of 1997 revenue. Named customers included Idall (Aido), Malata, ChangHong, SAST, “Xiamin Solid” and Samsung. “Xiamin Solid” remains unidentified-possibly Amoi 厦新 or another Xiamen maker. The future CVD consortium was already C-Cube’s customer base.

DVD royalties and the search for a successor

By 1997 two pressures were building: poor VCD picture on larger televisions, and DVD’s arrival. Aho gives three reasons China wanted a CD-based successor: the huge CD mechanism and pressing base; the view that DVD was tightly controlled by a closed foreign consortium; and hope that a domestic format would drive down DVD licence fees. Wikipedia repeats the second and third. Later Chinese formats followed the same logic-EVD (announced 18 November 2003) answered DVD/MPEG-2 costs “reportedly in the range of $13-$20 USD per hardware video player,” and CBHD later did the same for HD. A sceptical retrospective (dwenzhao.cn) notes that CVD/SVCD raised resolution to about 350 lines but shortened playing time, so users cared more that “the cost of watching discs went up.”

C-Cube, the consortium and the 9 June 1998 launch

C-Cube (Milpitas, California; founded 1988 by Edmund Sun, Alexandre Balkanski and others; Nasdaq: CUBE) already sold the CL450, CL480/CL484 and CL680 VideoCD decoders, the ZiVA DVD family, and the CLM4440/CLM4400 half-D1 MPEG-2 encoder chipset. Half-D1 (352-wide) MPEG-2 was therefore a resolution its tools and customers already used. Its 1997 10-K promised “next generation MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 decoders” in 1998; the CVD decoder (“CVDx1” in contemporary filings) was that roadmap, with first sales in Q2 1998.

Western sources (Aho, Wikipedia) say C-Cube completed the CVD specification in 1997 with major Chinese hardware manufacturers. Chinese sources emphasise the manufacturers: a Jinzheng staff article in Shenghuo Shibao (22 July 1998) calls CVD “the first time the Chinese electronics industry set its own industry standard” and lists Jinzheng, Changhong, SAST, BBK, Aido, Malata and Amoi as co-authors. A later Zhihu/Sina history of Aido credits founder Hu Zhibiao (胡志标) with proposing CVD and says “the CVD proposed by Hu Zhibiao was not adopted.” These accounts are not necessarily contradictory-chip vendor plus OEMs-but emphasis differs and is left open.

Wenzhai Bao (文摘报), 16 July 1998, headline 《CVD面世一月起风波》, records that on 9 June 1998 Aido, Changhong, SAST, Malata and Amoi jointly launched CVD in Shanghai and published a jointly drafted technical standard. CVD was glossed as China Video Disc (中国视频视盘), with “the key technology supported by… C-CUBE.” By moving first, the five firms already held 65% of the domestic VCD player market. Shenghuo Shibao’s 29 July survey pitched CVD as using “the same decompression technology as DVD,” horizontal resolution “up to 400 lines,” four-channel sound with four language and four subtitle choices, and backward compatibility with CVD, SVCD, VCD and CD. Players cost ¥500-600 more than VCD decks; Jinzheng priced CVD around ¥1,600-1,800 against VCD at ¥1,000-1,100 and DVD at ¥3,200-4,000, and promised free bundled discs. Launch-member lists differ across Wenzhai Bao (five), Jinzheng (seven), Baidu Baike and Western summaries; all versions are kept.

Government response, HQ-VCD and Chaoji VCD

Only a few days after launch, Wenzhai Bao reports, an unnamed state body warned companies “not to unilaterally issue technical standards covering an entire industry.” MII (信息产业部) would launch SVCD in H2 1998. The dispute was framed in national-interest terms; the government SVCD effort ran under the China Recording Standards Committee (全国录制设备标准化技术委员会) with ESS Technology support. A Beijing coordination meeting in late July then ruled the CVD enterprise standard “reasonable and legal.” HQ-VCD from Philips, Sony, Matsushita and JVC (released March 1998) was merged into SVCD in July, with the government committee keeping final authority-Aho’s “big win to the Video CD Consortium.” One Western guide later credits the Western licensors with developing “SVCD” itself; Chinese sources credit the Recording Standards Committee with HQ-VCD features merged in. Both accounts are kept.

The committee reviewed the text on 14-15 August 1998. MII announced SJ/T 11196-1998 《超级VCD系统技术规范》 on 29 September, effective 1 November. Guangming Daily called it China’s first digital A/V technical standard with independent IP and required CVD and SVCD makers to unify on it. The 3 November article states that two technical changes moved the standard toward CVD, unified the name as 超级VCD, and made existing CVD products conforming and in practice SVCD-compatible. English sources call the umbrella Chaoji Video CD: a compliant player must play at least SVCD, CVD, VCD 2.0, VCD 1.1 and CD-DA. One Baidu page gives SJ/T 11198-1998; the registry and most sources give 11196-both kept.

Compatibility war, decline and afterlife

A unified standard moved the fight into the discs. Wenzhai Bao (20 December 1998) describes early CVD mostly at 1/2 D1 (~280 lines in that article’s framing), SVCD at 2/3 D1 (more than 350 lines), mutual cracking of disc identifiers, encryption, and “interference codes” (干扰数码) so rivals’ players could not read discs. Shinco and others held “Super VCD error-correction compatibility contests” (超级VCD纠错兼容大比武) in Shanghai department stores in early November 1998. For collectors, some 1998-1999 Chinese pressings may fail on rival hardware for reasons that have nothing to do with the CVD format itself. Early CVD resolution claims also clash: about 280 lines (hostile December framing), “up to 400 lines” (July makers) or 350-400 lines (Jinzheng). These are marketing-era TV-line figures from partisan sources.

CVD as a brand name disappeared within months of 1 November 1998 because every CVD disc and player became a 超级VCD product. Aho already wondered in 2001 whether CVD would be orphaned in favour of SVCD. The wider market then turned against CD-based video: Shinco converted all sixteen production lines to DVD in 1998; makers tried MP3, MIDI, portable and networked Super VCD differentiation through mid-1999; Aido’s crisis broke on 17 April 1999; by July 1999 single-disc players fell below ¥800 and DVD began replacing VCD. No audited CVD sales figures exist-only the 300,000-600,000 installed-base cluster and conflicting claims about Super VCD’s 1998 share.

CVD’s second life had nothing to do with China. Roughly 2001-2008, Western hobbyists on VideoHelp, Doom9 and KVCD.net adopted “CVD” to mean 352×480/576 MPEG-2 on CD-R authored as non-standard SVCD-DVD-legal video, fewer artefacts per bit than SVCD at the same bitrate, and cleaner scaling to 704/720. SatStorm’s VideoHelp guide (21 June 2002) set the de-facto recipe: “352 X 576/480 @ 2520kb/s.” Lasting effects: Chaoji had to accommodate CVD’s installed base; the foreign-chip-plus-OEM versus ministry-led-standard pattern recurs with EVD and CBHD; half-D1 MPEG-2 remains useful for archives. Lineage: White Book VCD (1993) → CVD (1997/1998) / government SVCD / HQ-VCD → Chaoji VCD, SJ/T 11196-1998 → IEC 62107 (2000) → EVD (2003) → CBHD (2009).

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 History
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CBHD History: From 2005 Proposal to Market Collapse

Industrial background before the proposal

Throughout the standard-definition DVD era, mainland China produced roughly 30 percent of the world’s optical disc hardware. Domestic manufacturers remained bound by licensing fees from foreign patent pools including 3C, 6C and MPEG-LA. Contemporary figures for that royalty burden vary: about $22 per DVD player in one accounting, about €15 per unit in another, and a $21 per-player saving claimed by one CBHD maker. Those fees squeezed margins and sent large sums overseas.

As the HD DVD versus Blu-ray format war escalated, Chinese state institutes looked for an exit from royalty dependence. Earlier home-grown formats had already tried: EVD (Enhanced Versatile Disc) failed for lack of content-a lesson later reviewers said CBHD needed to learn.

2005: the actual origin

On 27 July 2005, OMNERC at Tsinghua University and the CETC 3rd Research Institute jointly submitted a technical proposal to the DVD Forum’s WG-11 working group for a Chinese HD DVD standard. Chinese industry reporting gives this date explicitly. The work therefore began while HD DVD was still an active international format-not after Toshiba abandoned it.

Over roughly three years (2005-2008) researchers modified the Toshiba-derived architecture in three principal areas: 8-12 ETM modulation was replaced with 4-6 FSM; HD DVD’s navigation system was simplified and reworked; and AVS entered as Chinese audio/video technology. The stated purpose of the modulation change was to increase Chinese-owned intellectual property in the physical format. The claim that “CBHD is just HD DVD with a different codec” is therefore wrong: changes reached the physical channel-coding layer. That fact later shapes firmware and drive-compatibility debates.

Dr. Hisashi Yamada and the DVD Forum

Dr. Hisashi Yamada, former Chief Technology Fellow at Toshiba’s Digital Media Network division and often called the “father of DVD,” worked with OMNERC engineers to transfer HD DVD physical-layer specifications to China. In February 2007 the DVD Forum board/steering meeting approved the text of the Chinese HD DVD physical-format specification; application-format work and prototypes then moved mainly to China. On 15 November 2007, the Forum’s 40th Steering Committee approved the “HD DVD China” logo and the DVD Forum-OMNERC agreement, and set up a License Enforcement Committee for the China HD DVD format. In February 2008 the Forum granted OMNERC the right to edit HD DVD specifications independently (English Wikipedia footnotes disagree whether that was the 41st or 42nd meeting; February 2008 is the date given).

Standards relationship is not compatibility. Early reports described CH-DVD as an HD DVD derivative that might be handled through firmware. By the final commercial specification, channel coding, navigation, codecs and content protection had all diverged.

From CH-DVD to CBHD

The original name was CH-DVD (China High Definition DVD). On 7 September 2007 OMNERC announced CH-DVD and founded the China High Definition DVD Industry Association (CHDA), aiming to ship players in 2008. An early prototype demonstration in 2007 used modified 0.6 mm HD DVD substrates. Commercial branding later became China Blue High-Definition (CBHD). Publications sometimes kept saying CH-DVD after the rename. One lineage covers the sequence:

  1. Chinese HD DVD proposal (2005)
  2. CH-DVD (2007)
  3. CBHD (late 2008 / 2009)

Renaming is dated to late 2008 together with integration of indigenous AVS, DRA and DKAA standards.

After Toshiba exited HD DVD

Toshiba ended HD DVD on 19 February 2008. Foreign analysts treated the physical architecture as dead. Instead CHDA, backed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), repurposed it: Western codecs, audio standards and DRM were stripped or subordinated in favour of state-owned intellectual property, and the technology was redirected to the domestic market. Factories could reuse DVD mastering and replication infrastructure, cutting capital spend and avoiding Blu-ray Disc Association licensing fees.

Through 2008, Tongfang, Shinco and TCL showed prototypes (March 2008). Launch dates of August, September, October and December 2008 all slipped. Shinco built 2,000 CBHD-9100 units before Chinese New Year 2009. Shanghai United Optical Disc (UOD) opened the first CBHD production line in July 2008. DFC Intelligence reported expected royalties around $8 per CBHD player on 28 July 2008. Patent CN101556807B (CBHD blue-laser optical pickup) carries a 7 April 2008 priority date.

Master timeline (selected)

Date Event
27 Jul 2005 OMNERC + CETC propose Chinese HD DVD to DVD Forum WG-11
Feb 2007 DVD Forum approves Chinese HD DVD physical-format text
7 Sep 2007 CH-DVD announced; CHDA founded
15 Nov 2007 “HD DVD China” logo and OMNERC agreement approved
19 Feb 2008 Toshiba ends HD DVD
Mar 2008 Tongfang, Shinco, TCL prototypes
Jul 2008 UOD opens first CBHD line
Early Mar 2009 Warner announces CBHD support via CAV Warner; launch titles ¥50-70
22 Apr 2009 Official commercial launch
Oct 2009 GBAX imports TCL THBD-1008 to UK (~£259.99)
21 Dec 2009 100 titles claimed reached
2 Jul 2010 CBHD-3D product launch; CBHD-HiFi unveiled
Q2 2010 onward CMM retail data: CBHD share falling sharply
2011-2012 Unofficial end of disc replication

Organisations and people

OMNERC deputy director Prof. Lu Da (陆达) led the project. CETC senior engineer Tian Yujing (田玉静) appears in industrialisation interviews; Gemini attributes the domestic navigation stack to CETC. MIIT supervised the effort. CHDA (later Chinese name 中国高清光盘产业推进联盟 / CHDIA) had nearly 20 founding members per Digitimes. Secretary-general Zhang Weimin (张伟民); Shinco chaired the alliance (spokesman Chen Changfeng 陈长峰; general manager Qin Zhishang 秦志尚). Other members included TCL (senior VP Shi Wanwen 史万文), Tsinghua Tongfang, Haier and BBK (步步高). CHDA copied DVD Forum committee structure. Toshiba held licensing because it owned underlying IP.

Content and replication: CAV Warner (managing director Tony Vaughan / 方东林); China Record Corporation / 中唱 and 中唱胜利影音 (GM Yan Hua 阎华); China Film Audio-Visual Press; Hongyi (January 2010 production batch); announced supporters with little visible output including Universal, National Geographic, Paramount, Celestial Pictures, BBC/Discovery. Memory-Tech developed the complete CBHD production process. UOD (Memory-Tech + China Record Shanghai) was, in April 2009, the only Chinese company with technology and equipment to press CBHD. CBC (CRC/BMB Audio Visual) handled editing, encoding and authoring. Retail channels: GOME, Suning, Dazhong; online Joyo-Amazon, Dangdang, Taobao. No GB or SJ national/industry standard number for CBHD itself was found in the research passes.

Launch performance and the 3:1 myth

Players sold in April 2009 at about ¥2,000 (~$293), roughly 40% below Blu-ray. Warner launch discs were ¥50-70 versus mainland Blu-ray at ¥150-200. Disc prices later fell to about ¥25-30, and as low as ¥28 online by 2010. In July-August 2009 TV Tokyo reported from one GOME store in Shanghai a sales split of 60% DVD / 30% CBHD / 10% Blu-ray. That single-store figure became the often-repeated claim that CBHD was outselling Blu-ray 3:1. It is not national market share. 北京商报 (12 Aug 2009) repeated the 30/10/60 claim as a promoter-sourced figure that later conflicted with CMM retail data.

ITmedia’s October 2009 field report found many ordinary DVD players, one Sony Blu-ray player and only one CBHD machine-a Shinco CBHD-9100-on display at Suning. Titles were available through Amazon China and Taobao, but many shops still relied on pirated content. Diamond Online’s China-based writer said he had never seen a physical store selling CBHD software, only online shops. CHDA-sourced figures put Shinco under 11,000 players a month from mid-2009 to mid-2010 (one pass summarises “on the order of 11,000” in late 2009). A January 2010 Guangzhou report estimated about 50,000 CBHD players sold in China. In April 2010 Suning Shanghai was selling 100+ Shinco units a month and giving 10 free discs with each player.

Decline

TCL left around late 2009. By July 2010 Tencent found only Shinco CBHD players in Beijing’s GOME, Suning and Dazhong, and only one 3D title. CMM analyst 杨瑞兵 (pjtime, 16 June 2011) said CBHD’s retail share fell sharply from Q2 2010 and that blue-laser players as a whole were only 4.2% of 2010 disc-player unit sales. December 2011 Sina coverage of Shinco’s decline said its blue-disc investment “met a cold market” as PCs spread. A 2013 ASCII retrospective treated the format as effectively gone. The Museum of Obsolete Media dates CBHD approximately 2009 to the early 2010s.

Documented causes: thin catalogue (about 100 titles by mid-2010 against 1,000 promised; China Record lacked an AVS encoder in April 2009); narrow hardware (only Shinco and TCL shipped; Tongfang held back; Panasonic, Sony, Samsung and LG refused and concentrated on Blu-ray); BD-9 piracy (dual-layer DVD-9 carrying re-compressed 1080p H.264 for Blu-ray players at ¥15-20); PC/file-based HD then streaming (iQiyi, Youku, Tencent Video rising 2010-2012); and Blu-ray’s global win, pushed in China by China Hualu and Sony.

Legacy

CBHD failed as a physical format, but AVS re-engineered as AVS2/AVS3 and DRA audio were mandated across China’s terrestrial HD, 4K Ultra-HD and 8K state broadcasting. Surviving fragments-standards pieces, patents, player specs, authoring-company records, verifier software, discs, firmware and collector hardware-are enough for a serious reconstruction attempt. The corrected historical sequence is a formal programme from 2005, deep engineering changes (ETM→FSM, Advanced Content→CETC, foreign codecs→AVS/DRA), continuation after HD DVD’s collapse, a Memory-Tech/CBC/UOD production ecosystem, launch on 22 April 2009, a documented overseas retail attempt, a catalogue exceeding 100 titles by industry claims, falling prices, then failure to build the installed base needed to survive.

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 Format Overview Guides
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Enhanced Versatile Disc: Format at a Glance

Enhanced Versatile Disc at a glance

Enhanced Versatile Disc (EVD) is China’s early-2000s attempt at a red-laser high-definition disc format on ordinary 120 mm DVD media. Developed by Beijing E-World Digital Technology Co., Ltd. (北京阜国数字技术有限公司) with Ministry of Information Industry backing, it launched at the Great Hall of the People on 18 November 2003, reached retail on 1 January 2004 with the Shinco EVD-8700, became electronics-industry recommended standard SJ/T 11299-2005 in February 2005, and faded after a December 2006 relaunch and a 2008 HD-EVD rename. It is not Blu-ray, not HD DVD, and not a new optical geometry: it is DVD-5 / DVD-9 discs plus proprietary encryption, ExAC/EAC audio, and HD video output from LSI Logic-based players.

120 mm DVD disc media; EVD uses the same physical disc form
EVD is physically a standard 120 mm DVD disc (two bonded 0.6 mm substrates, 650 nm red laser). Photo: William Hook, CC BY-SA, via Openverse and Flickr.

Identity card

Item Value
Format name Enhanced Versatile Disc (EVD)
Chinese names 增强型多媒体盘片系统; 新一代高密度数字激光视盘系统; 增强型通用光盘
Developer Beijing E-World Digital Technology Co., Ltd., founded 1999
Government backing MII, Ministry of Science and Technology, State Economic and Trade Commission
Research start 1999
Technical appraisal End of 2001 (E-World, alliance); early 2002 (PjTime/ZOL reprints)
Public launch 18 November 2003, Great Hall of the People, Beijing; 11 player models from 9 makers
First retail sales 1 January 2004; Shinco EVD-8700 at ¥1,998
MII HD test pass September 2004
Standard SJ/T 11299.1-4-2005; release/implementation 18 February 2005; MII notice 22/23 February 2005
Relaunch 6 December 2006 Beijing Declaration; ~54 players from ~20 makers; players ~¥700
HD-EVD 2008 upgrade: 1080p output claimed; players ~¥1,000; discs ¥15-30
Last new hardware 2008 (English Wikipedia)
Physical disc 120 mm DVD, 650 nm red laser, 4.7 GB (DVD-5) / 8.5 GB (DVD-9)
File system UDF (as DVD); directory tree not publicly documented
Video (contractual) On2 VP5 / VP6 licence, June 2003, US$2 per player
Video (reported in shipping players) MPEG-2 Main Profile @ High Level based scheme on LSI Logic decoders, with proprietary encryption (EE Times 2003 and 2006)
Video resolutions (claimed) 1920×1080i and 1280×720p; eight quality levels from VCD to HD
Audio ExAC / EAC (E-World); mono, stereo, 5.1
Subtitles 256-colour floating overlays with transparency, derived from Super VCD research
Encryption Proprietary; 128-bit key claimed; AACS migration announced 11 December 2005
Backward compatibility DVD, Super VCD, VCD, CD, MP3 (Shinco EVD-8700 also CD-R/RW, JPEG, AC-3/DTS)
Decoder chips LSI Logic (DoMiNo); iSuppli (2006): only one chip company provides EVD chips
Sales (reported) ~200,000 players in 2004; 300,000-400,000 in 2005; ~700,000 total by end 2006 (figures vary)
Disc catalogue 14 titles at Jindian Global’s first release; 100+ titles by 2006-2007
Successor CBHD (China Blue High-definition Disc), with Shinco switching camps

The single most important practical fact for collectors is that almost every player sold in China today with EVD in its listing is an ordinary DVD player. A genuine EVD player dates from 2004-2008, carries an LSI Logic decoder, and plays commercial Jindian or Zhongkai EVD discs that an ordinary DVD player rejects.

What sits on the disc

Physically, Chinese and Japanese sources agree that an EVD disc is simply a DVD disc: two bonded 0.6 mm polycarbonate substrates, 650 nm red laser, DVD-5 or DVD-9 capacity, UDF file system. Marketing claimed a two-hour HD movie on one disc (EDN 2003) or about 105 minutes of HD (Zhang Baoquan). No official EVD video bitrate was published; the arithmetic of those claims implies roughly 5-11 Mbit/s total, well below period broadcast HD MPEG-2 rates.

The video codec is the central open disagreement. EDN at launch said EVD would use On2’s VP5 and VP6. EE Times, in the same week and again in 2006, said shipping players used an MPEG-2 MP@HL-based scheme on LSI Logic chips, with On2 as an alternative option. On2’s own SEC filings show that the VP6 DSP port required for minimum royalties was never completed. Audio is E-World’s ExAC/EAC multichannel codec (SJ/T 11299.4), with English Wikipedia separately attributing EAC 2.0 to Coding Technologies; both origin stories are kept. Subtitles inherit Super VCD OGT research as 256-colour floating overlays. Protection in shipping titles was proprietary encryption; AACS was announced but no title is documented as having shipped with it.

How the numbers relate

EVD was sold as a way for Chinese DVD makers to escape foreign patent pools while offering HD on existing pressing lines. In practice every sellable EVD player also played DVD, so 6C/3C royalties remained. Player forecasts at launch ran to 1.8 million units in 2004; reported actuals were about 200,000 that year and a few hundred thousand more through 2006. Disc supply stayed thin: fourteen first titles from Jindian Global, then a slow climb past one hundred titles while pirate DVD compilations sold for a few yuan.

Relaunch counts for December 2006 disagree: Sina reported 18-19 makers and 51-52 models; AP, ZOL and English Wikipedia report 20 makers and 54 players at about ¥700. HD-EVD in 2008 promised 1080p output and ¥1,000 players; English Wikipedia dates the last new hardware to that year. Shinco, the main EVD producer, later moved to CBHD.

Quick codec and structure matrix

  • Physical: DVD-5 / DVD-9, 650 nm, UDF; same lines as DVD (TechRadar, Baidu) or more complex multilayer pressing (Sohu 2019). Both manufacturing claims kept.
  • Video: MPEG-2 MP@HL-based on shipping LSI players (EE Times); VP5/VP6 licensed but not ported to shipping DSPs (On2 SEC); AVS as declared future direction only.
  • Audio: ExAC / EAC, mono / stereo / 5.1; AC-3-to-EAC conversion tool existed for mastering.
  • Subtitles: 256-colour floating overlays from Super VCD research.
  • Protection: Proprietary encryption in shipping titles; AACS announced December 2005, not documented on discs.

What this glance deliberately excludes

Detailed royalty arithmetic, the On2 arbitration docket, rival HVD/HDV/FVD/VMD formats, full SJ/T part titles, and model-by-model hardware belong in later posts. This glance is the reference card: names, dates, physical parameters, the codec dispute, sales envelopes and the collector rule that modern EVD listings are almost always DVD players.

When later posts cite SJ/T 11299-2005, LSI Logic DoMiNo, Jindian Global, Shinco EVD-8700, Beijing Declaration or HD-EVD, they mean this parameter set. When they keep VP5/VP6 beside MPEG-2 MP@HL, they are preserving an open disagreement documented in contemporary trade press and SEC filings, not choosing a single winner.

Collector reminder

If a shopping listing, auction title or modern player faceplate says EVD, assume DVD until proven otherwise. Proof means a 2004-2008 manufacture date, an alliance brand with a documented or photographable LSI Logic decoder, HD component (or later HDMI) output, and preferably a successful play of a commercial Jindian or Zhongkai EVD title. Everything else in this series builds on that filter so that history, specifications and hardware posts are not accidentally describing today’s keyword-stuffed DVD decks.

Lineage in three steps

  1. White Book VCD boom and CVD / Super VCD (SJ/T 11196-1998) on CD media.
  2. EVD research (1999), launch (2003), SJ/T 11299-2005 on DVD media with red-laser HD claims.
  3. Collapse (2007-2008) and migration of key makers into CBHD on blue-laser HD DVD-derived technology.

EE Times in 2003 already called EVD a reincarnation of the VCD-to-Super-VCD strategy: embrace a foreign optical base, then push a Chinese system specification on top. The optical geometry stayed DVD; the fight was over codecs, royalties, content and whether HD TVs were common enough to make the difference visible.

Commercial life in numbers

Indicative player prices fell from ¥1,998 (January 2004) through ¥1,698 (June 2004) and promotional ¥998, to about ¥700 at the 2006 relaunch and about ¥1,000 for announced HD-EVD units. Disc prices stayed in the ¥18-28 band despite Zhang Baoquan’s 2005 promise of ¥3-5 discs. Sales figures disagree on whether 700,000 is cumulative installed base by late 2006 (EE Times) or a single-year claim (AFP quoting Zhang). Both strands are kept.

Alliance membership lists also disagree: E-World’s FAQ names Konka, Shinco, BBK, Amoi, Malata and SVA as shareholders; English Wikipedia and c114 give longer launch or nine-member sets. Treat those as open disagreements rather than a single canonical roster.

Reading this card against later posts

Later posts unpack history, technical specifications, related red-laser formats, standards and patents, and player hardware without repeating this card in full. The working vocabulary is: red-laser DVD media, SJ/T 11299, LSI Logic decoder, proprietary encryption, ExAC/EAC audio, Jindian/Zhongkai titles, and genuine hardware only from the 2004-2008 window.

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 Format Overview Guides
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China Video Disc: Format at a Glance

China Video Disc at a glance

China Video Disc (CVD) is the English name used in 1998 Chinese press for a short-lived CD-based video format, glossed as 中国视频视盘. It was backed by C-Cube Microsystems together with major Chinese VCD player makers, launched publicly in Shanghai on 9 June 1998, and within months absorbed into the Ministry of Information Industry’s Chaoji VCD (超级VCD / Super VCD) regime under SJ/T 11196-1998. As a distinct retail brand it lasted only from June 1998 into early 1999; as a disc type it survives inside that umbrella and, later, as a Western hobbyist encoding recipe.

Compact Disc - CVD uses standard 120 mm CD media
CVD is physically a standard 120 mm compact disc (CD-ROM XA / CD-i Bridge). Photo: Arun Kulshreshtha, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (via Openverse).

Identity card

Item Value
Format name China Video Disc (CVD)
Chinese name 中国视频视盘 (1998 press); later under 超级VCD
Backer C-Cube Microsystems with Chinese VCD OEMs
Specification completed 1997 (Aho; Wikipedia)
Public launch 9 June 1998, Shanghai, with a jointly drafted industry standard
Absorbed into SJ/T 11196-1998 《超级VCD系统技术规范》, announced 29 September 1998, in force 1 November 1998
Commercial life as a distinct brand June 1998 to about early 1999
Primary market Mainland China (Shanghai, Wuhan and Beijing named in 1998 reports)
Physical basis Standard 120 mm CD, CD-ROM XA / CD-i Bridge, Mode 2 Form 2 for MPEG tracks
Drive speed 2× CD (Philips double-speed mechanism with CD7 digital servo, per Guangming Daily)
Video MPEG-2 (MP@ML), VBR
Resolution 352×480 (NTSC) / 352×576 (PAL), i.e. 1/2 D1; 1998 press also says CVD accommodated 2/3 D1 sources
Combined bitrate ceiling About 2.7-2.78 Mbps (2× CD Form 2 throughput)
Audio MPEG-1 Layer II, 44.1 kHz; up to 4 channels; a 5.1-channel CVD scheme was announced in 1998
Subtitles Up to 4 bitmap streams in the non-IEC “CVD-style” format
Menus / PBC SVCD-style playback control (selection lists, play lists, entry points)
Disc structure SVCD tree: /SVCD/INFO.SVD with system ID “SUPERVCD”, /MPEG2 (or /MPEGAV), /SEGMENT, /EXT
Playing time About 35-45 minutes per 74/80-minute disc at full rate; longer at reduced VBR averages
Decoder chips C-Cube CVD decoder (first sales Q2 1998; described as Chao Ji VCD-compliant in C-Cube’s Q3 1998 10-Q)
Installed base (reported) 300,000-600,000 players in the channel before the government SVCD spec was ready (Aho); “about 600,000” (Wikipedia)
Player price (1998) About ¥1,600-1,800; ¥500-600 above an equivalent VCD player

Launch-member lists differ by source. Wenzhai Bao (July 1998) names five-Aido 爱多, Changhong 长虹, SAST 先科, Malata 万利达 and Amoi 厦新-holding 65% of the domestic VCD player market. A Jinzheng Shenghuo Shibao article lists seven “first batch” makers including Jinzheng 金正 and BBK 步步高. Baidu Baike names SAST, Changhong, Aido and BBK for the 9 June launch; Western accounts add Nintaus/Jinzheng and “Xiamen Solid.” All lists are kept as open disagreements.

What sits on the disc

Video is MPEG-2 Main Profile at Main Level with variable bitrate. The practical definition used by Western tools and guides is half-D1: 352×480 at 29.97 fps for NTSC and 352×576 at 25 fps for PAL. That width is a legal DVD-Video resolution, which is why later hobbyists could move CVD video to DVD without re-encoding video-only the 44.1 kHz audio must be resampled to 48 kHz. Audio is MPEG-1 Layer II at 44.1 kHz, typically around 224 kbps, with up to two stereo pairs or four mono tracks marketed as four language choices. Bitmap overlay subtitles use a non-IEC “CVD-style” layout associated with CVD and EnReach I-Author, not the Philips OGT format later written into SVCD tooling. Playback control follows the SVCD tree of play lists, selection lists and entry points.

The single most important practical fact for collectors and rippers is that a CVD disc cannot be told apart from an SVCD by its file system alone. Both carry the INFO.SVD system ID “SUPERVCD”. The reliable test is the video width: 352 pixels for CVD, 480 for SVCD. GNU VCDImager’s documentation lists “SUPERVCD” as the shared system ID for SVCD, XVCD and CVD, with “HQ-VCD” reserved for the Video CD Consortium’s HQ-VCD variant.

How the numbers relate

CVD is not a new optical geometry. It is ordinary 120 mm CD pressed or burned as CD-ROM XA / CD-i Bridge: Mode 2 Form 1 for the ISO 9660 metadata track, Mode 2 Form 2 for MPEG programme streams. Form 2 sectors carry 2,324 bytes of user data. At 2× (150 sectors per second) that yields roughly 2.79 Mbps of raw throughput-the ceiling usually quoted as about 2.7 Mbps or 2,778 kbps for combined audio and video. At full rate an 80-minute blank holds about forty minutes of programme after ISO overhead and gaps; a 74-minute blank is nearer thirty-seven minutes. Longer titles need lower average VBR rates, commonly in the 1.5-2.0 Mbps band for sixty to eighty minutes of content.

Where CVD diverges from White Book VCD is the move from MPEG-1 at quarter-D1 (352×240/288) to MPEG-2 at half-D1, with SVCD-style menus and multi-stream audio/subtitles. Where it diverges from government/Philips SVCD is mainly horizontal resolution and subtitle format: 352-wide video and CVD-style bitmaps versus 480-wide video and OGT. Guangming Daily’s 3 November 1998 comparison, written after SJ/T 11196 took effect, stated that CVD and SVCD were identical in physical and file format and that CVD suited both 1/2 D1 and 2/3 D1 sources while SVCD suited 2/3 D1 only. Western sources still define CVD by the 352-pixel width. That disagreement is left open.

Market envelope in one paragraph

By mid-1998 China’s VCD industry was enormous: secondary sources put 1998 player sales near fourteen million units at the peak, with cumulative installed bases in the tens of millions. CVD launched into that channel at a ¥500-600 premium over VCD and well below contemporary DVD street prices of about ¥3,200-4,000. Contemporary reports said CVD was already selling quickly in Shanghai and Wuhan, with Aido and SAST machines on Beijing shelves and Jinzheng taking advance orders. Aho estimates 300,000-600,000 CVD players in distribution before the government SVCD text was ready; Wikipedia repeats “about 600,000.” Neither figure cites primary audited data. C-Cube booked first CVD decoder sales in Q2 1998 and, by its Q3 1998 10-Q, was describing the same silicon as compliant with the new Chao Ji VCD standard.

Quick codec and structure matrix

  • Video: MPEG-2 MP@ML, VBR; 352×480 (NTSC) / 352×576 (PAL); practical max around 2,516-2,600 kbps.
  • Audio: MPEG-1 Layer II, 44.1 kHz; up to 4 channels; 5.1 scheme announced but not the mass-market default.
  • Subtitles: Up to 4 CVD-style bitmap streams (not IEC 62107 OGT).
  • Navigation: SVCD-style PBC under /SVCD with INFO.SVD system ID “SUPERVCD”.
  • Protection: No CSS/region/Macrovision in the format; 1998-1999 “interference codes” were rival-locking tactics, not anti-piracy DRM.

What this glance deliberately excludes

Detailed timelines of the VCD boom, the MII-ESS SVCD programme, HQ-VCD politics, patents, firmware and catalogues belong in later posts. This glance is the reference card: names, dates, physical parameters, codecs, SUPERVCD identity, launch-maker disagreements and installed-base claims.

When later posts cite “352×480/576,” “SUPERVCD,” “2.7 Mbps,” “SJ/T 11196-1998,” “Chaoji VCD” or “C-Cube CVD decoder,” they mean this parameter set. When they name Aido, Changhong, SAST, Malata, Amoi, Jinzheng or BBK, they mean the documented 1998 launch and first-batch sets.

Lineage in three steps

  1. White Book VCD boom in China (1993-1998) and C-Cube’s MPEG decoder dominance.
  2. CVD specification (1997) and Shanghai public launch (9 June 1998).
  3. SJ/T 11196-1998 Chaoji VCD compromise (announced 29 September, effective 1 November 1998), folding CVD into Super VCD player requirements.

Discs were still called “CVD” after Chaoji branding; Western hobbyists later reused the name for half-D1 MPEG-2 on CD-R. Treat those as one lineage with renaming and a second life as an encoding recipe. The physical geometry stayed CD; the fight was over who set the next MPEG-2-on-CD standard for China’s installed base of mechanisms and pressing plants.

Commercial life in numbers

Retail shelves saw CVD players from June 1998. Indicative prices put VCD around ¥1,000-1,100, CVD around ¥1,600-1,800 and DVD around ¥3,200-4,000, with CVD discs costing about the same to press as VCD. Guangming Daily (November 1998) reported several hundred bundled titles, thousands of discs from nearly twenty publishers, and a ¥200 million “CVD 2000 project”; SVCD makers were said to be releasing nearly 100 titles by year end-press claims, not audited counts.

Installed-base reporting is noisy. Aho’s 300,000-600,000 range (Wikipedia’s “about 600,000”) lacks primary audited data. Wenzhai Bao’s 65% figure is the launch makers’ share of the overall VCD player market, not CVD’s share. Baidu Baike’s claim that 1998 Super VCD sales already equalled VCD conflicts with retrospectives that treat 1998 as the VCD peak and mid-1999 as DVD’s rise. Both strands are kept.

Modern authoring note

No mainstream tool offers a native CVD disc type except DeVeDe. Practical builds follow non-standard SVCD authoring (vcdimager -t svcd, mplex -f 5, ffmpeg SVCD-style streams at 352-wide). The disc still presents as SUPERVCD; only encoded width marks it as CVD.

Reading this card against later posts

When later posts cite half-D1 MPEG-2, SUPERVCD, SJ/T 11196-1998 / Chaoji VCD, or C-Cube’s Q2-to-Q3 1998 wording shift from “China Video Disc (CVD) platform” to “Chao Ji VCD standard,” they use this card’s vocabulary. The remaining posts unpack history, specifications, related formats, standards and patents without repeating it in full.

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 Format Overview Guides
, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
China Blue High-Definition Disc: Format at a Glance

China Blue High-Definition Disc at a glance

China Blue High-Definition Disc (CBHD) is the English commercial name for the format Chinese sources call 中国蓝光高清光盘, shortened to 中国蓝光. Earlier publicity used CH-DVD / China High Definition DVD and the DVD Forum logo name “HD DVD China.” Developers were the Optical Memory National Engineering Research Center (OMNERC, 清华大学光盘国家工程研究中心) at Tsinghua University together with the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC) 3rd Research Institute (中国电子科技集团第三研究所).

Identity card

Item Value
Proposal to DVD Forum WG-11 27 July 2005
Public announcement (as CH-DVD) 7 September 2007
Retail / official commercial launch April 2009 / 22 April 2009
Commercial life Approximately 2009 to 2011 / early 2010s
Primary market Mainland China (limited UK import via GBAX, 2009)
Physical basis HD DVD / DVD optical architecture, 2 × 0.6 mm bonded substrates
Disc diameter 120 mm
Capacity 15 GB single layer, 30 GB dual layer
Laser / NA 405 nm blue-violet / 0.65
Track pitch / minimum pit 0.40 μm / 0.204 μm
Modulation 4-6 FSM (replacing HD DVD’s 8-12 ETM)
1× transfer rate Approximately 36.55 Mbps
Maximum video bitrate (reported) 28 Mbps
File system UDF
Maximum resolution 1920 × 1080 (1080p)
Navigation CETC navigation (replacing HD DVD Advanced Content / HDi)

The archived official CHDA technical page is the source for the pit length, track pitch and numerical-aperture figures that later summaries often omit. It states that CBHD kept the 12 cm disc and used 405 nm light with NA 0.65, reducing pit length to 0.204 μm and track pitch to 0.4 μm.

What sits on the disc

Video codecs listed for the format are AVS (GB/T 20090.2), H.264/AVC, VC-1 and MPEG-2; MPEG-4 also appears on player lists. Audio codecs include AVS Audio, DRA (GB/T 22726), Dolby AC-3 and LPCM; the TCL THBD-1008 additionally lists Dolby Digital Plus and TrueHD. Copy protection split by content origin: DKAA for domestic titles, AACS for international titles. In 2010 the alliance also unveiled CBHD-3D and CBHD-HiFi profile extensions.

Commercial players normally documented as production models are six units: Shinco CBHD-9100, CBHD-3800, HD-2100 and HD-3700U, plus TCL THBD-1008 and THBD-1038. Prototypes and pre-production machines sat around that commercial set. Catalogue size claims cluster around about 100 titles by December 2009 to mid-2010, with one early-2010 report citing about 150; a promised 1,000 titles for 2010 was never reached.

How the numbers relate

Capacity, laser wavelength and cover-layer thickness place CBHD next to HD DVD rather than Blu-ray. Single-layer 15 GB and dual-layer 30 GB match the HD DVD envelope. The 0.6 mm bonded-substrate stack is the same family of DVD-like geometry that Chinese replication plants already knew how to make. Blu-ray’s 0.1 mm cover and 0.85 NA optics were deliberately not adopted.

Where CBHD diverges from a simple HD DVD rebadge is the channel and application stack. Replacing 8-12 ETM with 4-6 FSM changes the physical channel coding. Replacing Advanced Content with CETC navigation changes menus and interactivity. Mandating AVS and DRA (alongside legacy Western codecs on players) and pairing DKAA with AACS changes the intellectual-property and DRM profile. Those four layers-modulation, navigation, codecs, protection-are the short definition of the format beyond the capacity table.

Transfer rates and video ceiling

A 1× rate near 36.55 Mbps and a reported maximum video bitrate of 28 Mbps are reconstruction-relevant numbers. They show that CBHD is not “HD video burned onto a DVD.” The physical channel is genuine high-density blue-laser optical media. Average commercial encodes discussed elsewhere in this research cluster in the 12-18 Mbps range for 1080p, leaving headroom under the 28 Mbps ceiling for peaks and multiplexed audio.

Market envelope in one paragraph

Development started with a July 2005 proposal while HD DVD was still an active international format. Public CH-DVD announcement and CHDA founding followed in September 2007. Toshiba ended HD DVD in February 2008; Chinese work continued under MIIT backing and commercial branding as CBHD. Retail players and discs reached Chinese stores in April 2009 at player prices around ¥2,000 and disc prices initially ¥50-70. Limited overseas retail appeared when GBAX imported the TCL THBD-1008 into the United Kingdom in October 2009. By mid-2010 the title count had stalled near the low hundreds against a thin hardware base; by 2011-2012 replication had effectively ended.

Quick codec and protection matrix

  • Video: AVS (national GB/T 20090.2), H.264/AVC, VC-1, MPEG-2; MPEG-4 listed on hardware.
  • Audio: AVS Audio, DRA, Dolby AC-3, LPCM; Dolby Digital Plus / TrueHD on TCL THBD-1008.
  • DRM: DKAA domestic; AACS international.
  • Navigation: CETC (not HDi / Advanced Content).
  • Extensions: CBHD-3D and CBHD-HiFi (2010).

What this glance deliberately excludes

Detailed timelines, patent numbers, authoring chains, firmware debates and catalogue title lists belong in later chapters of this series. The glance is the fixed reference card: names, dates, physical parameters from the CHDA technical page, codec and DRM labels, the six production player models, and the catalogue-size claims that contemporary reporting actually made. Use it as the index into the longer research posts rather than as a substitute for them.

When later posts cite “15/30 GB,” “4-6 FSM,” “NA 0.65,” “0.204 μm pits,” “0.40 μm track pitch,” “36.55 Mbps 1×,” or “28 Mbps max video,” they are referring to the same CHDA-backed parameter set summarised here. When they name Shinco CBHD-9100, CBHD-3800, HD-2100, HD-3700U or TCL THBD-1008 / THBD-1038, they are referring to the documented commercial hardware set, not to an open-ended list of brands.

Lineage in three steps

  1. Chinese HD DVD proposal to DVD Forum WG-11 (2005).
  2. CH-DVD announcement and CHDA founding (2007).
  3. Commercial CBHD branding and April 2009 retail launch.

Publications sometimes kept calling the format CH-DVD after CBHD branding appeared. Treat that as one lineage with renaming, not as three unrelated disc formats. The physical geometry stayed HD DVD-like; the Chinese team’s work concentrated on the layers that carried licensing cost and domestic-standard control.

Commercial life in numbers

Retail shelves saw players from April 2009. The official commercial launch date recorded in industry timelines is 22 April 2009. Shinco had already built 2,000 CBHD-9100 units before Chinese New Year that year. Player street prices clustered near ¥2,000 at launch-about forty percent below contemporary Blu-ray decks in mainland China-then fell: the CBHD-9100 appeared around ¥1,599 in Guangzhou by January 2010. Disc prices opened at ¥50-70 for Warner launch titles, drifted toward ¥25-30 as the format fought piracy, and were reported online near ¥28 by 2010.

Title-count reporting is noisy. Japanese Wikipedia notes 100 titles reached by 21 December 2009. A Guangzhou report in January 2010 put CBHD at about 150 titles against 1,800 Blu-ray titles and estimated about 50,000 CBHD players sold nationwide. Alliance messaging at the September 2009 Guangzhou conference still projected 1,000 titles and a million players for 2010; those targets were not met. Mid-2010 Tencent coverage still sat near about 100 titles with a single 3D title in existence.

Hardware set, named once

Only two brands shipped commercial players: Shinco and TCL. The six production designations used throughout this series are Shinco CBHD-9100 (flagship), CBHD-3800 (slim mid-range), HD-2100 (wall-mount/entry), HD-3700U (hybrid UTI/network player), TCL THBD-1008 (Toshiba HD-A30-derived launch model, also sold in the UK by GBAX at about £259.99) and TCL THBD-1038 (second-generation listing). Prototypes such as Tongfang’s CBHD-0002 and pre-production Shinco CBHD-9000 listings appear in forum photography but are not counted as the commercial six. No PC optical drives or laptops with CBHD branding were found in the research passes.

Protection and region notes

Domestic Chinese films used DKAA; international films used AACS. Patent-sharing language described “AACS+DKAA,” and the AACS consortium had interim CBHD specification documents as early as 2007. Region coding is poorly attested: one pass treats it as undocumented (HD DVD itself was region-free); another states discs were region-locked to China with no US or Europe editions. Packaging used black Blu-ray-size keep-cases originally associated with HD-VMD tooling, carrying a blue CBHD logo; the DVD Forum’s separate “HD DVD China” logo had been approved in November 2007.

Extensions that arrived late

On 2 July 2010 CHDA launched CBHD-3D products in Beijing and unveiled CBHD-HiFi. HiFi used dual-layer 30 GB capacity for multi-channel LPCM up to 24-bit/192 kHz over secure HDMI. By early July 2010 only one 3D title was known to exist; Guangzhou Asian Games ceremonies were planned for 3D release. These extensions did not reverse the retail decline that CMM data already showed from the second quarter of 2010.

Reading this card against later posts

When a later post cites Modulation 4-6 FSM, it is pointing at the channel-coding change that blocks naïve HD DVD firmware hacks. When it cites CETC, it means the navigation replacement for Advanced Content/HDi. When it cites AVS and DRA, remember that early 2009 discs may still have used VC-1 or AVC because China Record lacked an AVS encoder at launch. When it cites DKAA versus AACS, treat domestic and international discs as two preservation problems. The glance table is the shared vocabulary; the remaining thirteen posts unpack history, physics, codecs, patents, players, PC paths, firmware, authoring, catalogue, sourcing, community archives and open questions without repeating this card in full.

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: