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.

Identity card

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:

• Amazon.de
• Amazon.co.uk
• Amazon.com
• Amazon.ca