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Blog CBHD Community Sources Guides
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CBHD Community Sources: Forums, Press and Reviews

Why forums and trade press matter more than product pages

Manufacturer support sites for 2009 CBHD players are mostly dead. The densest surviving primary material sits in 2009-2011 forum threads and Chinese/Japanese trade press. AVSForum pages returned HTTP 402 when fetched directly in one research pass, so details below combine search snippets with cited URLs that still resolve when logged-in browsers or archives cooperate.

Forum threads

Thread Date Unique content
AVSForum – Chinese CBHD player master thread (with pics) 2009-2010 TCL service-manual block diagram and chip IDs; A30/A35 comparison; import experience; Taobao disc prices; CHDA Guangzhou plans; Joyo-Amazon/Dangdang; GOME/Suning deals
AVSForum – China CBHD Player User Reports ~May 2009 THBD-1008 unboxing; Toshiba-like menu; three launch models with photos (THBD-1008, Shinco CBHD-9000, THTF CBHD-0002); bundle list
AVSForum – China turns HDDVD into CBHD 2008 Early marketing; firmware debate; Richard Paul’s physical-incapability view
AVSForum – China officially released CBHD players 22 Apr 2009 Translation of Sina Tech launch article
LDDb – CBHD: The forgotten Blu-Ray competitor – Owner experience with Shinco HD-3700U, quirks, directory behaviour
LDDb – second CBHD thread – Sampler bundles, sourcing, trading
What Hi-Fi – Can I play Chinese CBHD in HD DVD player 16 Oct 2009 Confirms incompatibility
DVD Talk – Will China’s HD DVD format work in domestic players 2008 Compatibility debate
Reddit r/HDDVD – HD DVD Emulator Firmware – HD DVD firmware context (not CBHD dumps)

Key URLs (avsforum.com threads 1150473, 1149496, 1059383, 1141114; forum.lddb.com topics 10789 and 11813; forums.whathifi.com thread 35580; forum.dvdtalk.com thread 525341).

Reviews and Chinese trade press

  • PConline Shinco CBHD-9100 review, 5 Jul 2009 – five pages, 54 photos, spec table (Sina mirror 4 Jul 2009).
  • 电脑报 2009 No. 30 – hands-on; USB 1080p and subtitles; ¥2,999 (sciencenet repost).
  • itavcn CBHD-9100 spec page, May 2009.
  • ZOL THBD-1008 menu/interface reviews, Jun 2009; CBHD-9100 price page ¥2,580.
  • Sina Tech TCL CBHD test (1 Jun 2009); industrialisation piece naming three format changes and FSM “to add Chinese patents” (3 Apr 2009).
  • Yesky CBHD-3800 parameters, ¥2,980.
  • pjtime buyer’s guide, CBHD-9100 review, THBD-1008 coverage, market comparisons, Dec 2009 price cuts, Jan 2010 CBHD vs BD, 2 Jul 2010 3D launch, 16 Jun 2011 CMM data (4.2% blue-laser share).
  • av269 15 Jan 2010 – 150 vs 1,800 titles; 50,000 players; regional prices.
  • Tencent Tech 5 Jul 2010 – one 3D title; ~100 titles; TCL exit.
  • cnBeta Warner support (Mar 2009); ~80 CAV Warner titles and ¥28 discs (2010).
  • eetrend Apr 2010 – Suning sales; National Geographic set.
  • big-bit / fx361 / CCCME / Chinatimes – Warner plans, 30/10/60 sales claim, 中录 exclusivity note, 3D push, launch plans.
  • Sina News Dec 2011 – Shinco blue-disc investment “met a cold market.”

International press and blogs

  • Nikkei xTECH (4 Aug 2009) – price economics (¥55 vs ¥175 BD vs ¥60 pirated BD).
  • Diamond Online – retail observation (writer never saw physical CBHD software shops).
  • ITmedia field report (Oct 2009) – Suning visit; Slumdog Millionaire as CBHD-only vs HD DVD.
  • ASCII retrospective (2013) – format gone; author estimated ~25 dedicated titles across EVD/CBHD experiments.
  • New Atlas, CDRInfo (launch, AACS, CHDA structure, HD DVD China logo), Gizmodo (modulation comment), Tom’s Hardware, Sound & Vision, The Guardian (31 Jul 2008), What Hi-Fi (CBHD-3D/HiFi), DFC Intelligence (28 Jul 2008, ~$8 royalty), See You Next Wednesday (28 May 2009 hack hopes), diit.cz (European import), dvd-and-beyond (Warner/CAV Warner).
  • Gigazine (27 Oct 2009) – TCL internals as Toshiba HD DVD hardware.

Video

YouTube clip titled along the lines of “After many years, finally CBHD Chinese Blue High …” (video id VzRO4VhM1Bw) is cited in secondary research. Bilibili searches for CBHD teardowns in one pass returned only an unrelated Shinco VCD changer video.

Manufacturer and alliance URLs to archive-hunt

  • shinco.com historical news_id pages 312, 361, 367 (Warner support, Universal support, product launch) – paste into Wayback.
  • chdia.org.cn (e.g. /dongtai002.html) – alliance site, likely offline.
  • tcl.com 2009-2010 product captures; current manual downloaders unlikely to list THBD-1008.
  • Memory-Tech 20090323 and 20090430 CBHD announcements.
  • AACS Spec CBHD Prerecorded 0.90 (7 Oct 2008) PDF cited by ja.wikipedia.

Not yet searched or found empty

Baidu Tieba (CBHD吧, 蓝光吧, 新科吧), Chiphell, hifidiy, 影音极客, hifi.com.cn, AV前线, Zhihu, Douban groups, Doom9, videohelp, Myce/CDFreaks, AV Watch, Phile-web, Reddit beyond r/HDDVD, Youku, Xigua, Douyin and Weibo remain lightly touched or empty in the passes. Empty search results are not proof of absence-especially on Tieba and Douban.

For reconstruction work, prioritise: AVSForum master thread page 5 (TCL 维修手册 excerpts), LDDb HD-3700U owner posts, PConline/ZOL photo reviews, Memory-Tech press releases, and Wayback walks of shinco.com/chdia.org.cn. Those sources carry chip IDs, bundle lists, menu trees and pricing that product databases dropped years ago.

How to work the archive without the live web

Start with PConline’s five-page CBHD-9100 review and ZOL’s THBD-1008 hands-on pieces for UI photography and measured behaviour. Add pjtime’s 2009-2011 market series for price cuts, 3D launch notes and the June 2011 CMM statistic that blue-laser players were only 4.2 percent of 2010 disc-player unit sales. Tencent’s 5 July 2010 article pins TCL’s exit, the ~100-title plateau and the single 3D title. av269’s 15 January 2010 Guangzhou comparison supplies the 150-versus-1,800 title claim and the ~50,000 player estimate.

Japanese and English field reporting fills gaps Chinese marketing omitted: ITmedia’s Suning visit, Nikkei xTECH price economics, Diamond Online’s observation that software was online-only for one writer, Gigazine on TCL’s Toshiba internals, ASCII’s 2013 retrospective, and diit.cz on European arrival. CDRInfo’s cluster on CHDA structure, the HD DVD China logo and AACS mentions remains useful for standards chronology.

Forum triage order

  1. AVSForum master thread-especially page 5 service-manual excerpts.
  2. AVSForum User Reports-unboxing, CBHD-9000/CBHD-0002 photos, bundles.
  3. LDDb CBHD threads-HD-3700U quirks and trading.
  4. What Hi-Fi and DVD Talk-compatibility negatives.
  5. 2008 “China turns HDDVD into CBHD” thread-firmware debate context.

Manufacturer URLs to feed into Wayback include shinco.com news_id 312, 361 and 367, chdia.org.cn dynamic pages, Memory-Tech’s March/April 2009 announcements, and the AACS CBHD Pre-recorded 0.90 PDF cited by Japanese Wikipedia. Empty results on Tieba, Chiphell, Doom9 and Bilibili teardowns are unfinished searches, not closed cases. Budget time for logged-in AVSForum browsing because anonymous fetches returned HTTP 402 in one research pass.

Additional press anchors worth downloading before links rot further: cnBeta Warner-support and industrialisation interviews with Tian Yujing; big-bit pieces on Warner’s 100-title plan and the August 2009 sales-lead claim; Chinatimes launch planning; Sina’s December 2011 Shinco “cold market” post-mortem; What Hi-Fi’s CBHD-3D/HiFi coverage; DFC Intelligence’s 28 July 2008 royalty note; See You Next Wednesday’s May 2009 hack-hope blog; New Atlas and Tom’s Hardware launch notices. Each supplies a dated claim you can cross-check against CMM and Tencent later data.

Video remains thin: one YouTube clip is cited; Bilibili teardown searches misfired on unrelated Shinco VCD changers. Offering rewards in preservation Discord/QQ groups for phone video of menu trees and disc loads may outperform web search. When AVSForum returns payment walls, use search-engine caches and the Wayback Machine on thread URLs ending in page-4 and page-5.

pjtime’s Shinco brand news index still lists the 3 March 2010 CBHD-3800/HD-2100 article; av-china.com and Headphone Club covered HiFi/3D launch events in July and September 2010; CCCME summarised the 3D patent-pool working group. Launch reporting from a&s, Hualu and hxzg.net on 22 April 2009 still anchors the commercial start date. Cross-linking those URLs in a private archive before they disappear is itself preservation work. When citing forums, capture page numbers because AVSForum rewrites paths between forum and threads forms.

Building a personal source packet

Download and hash PConline’s CBHD-9100 review pages, ZOL’s THBD-1008 articles, the Sina Tech 3 April 2009 industrialisation piece on FSM patents, Memory-Tech’s two 2009 PDFs or HTML announcements, DFC Intelligence’s royalty note, and Tencent’s July 2010 market post-mortem. Store AVSForum thread IDs 1150473, 1149496, 1059383 and 1141114 with page snapshots. Keep LDDb topic 10789 and 11813. Add the AACS CBHD Pre-recorded 0.90 filename to the packet even if the PDF must be retrieved later from AACS LA or archives. That packet lets future researchers work offline when forums paywall or domains expire.

Pair each downloaded article with its access date and final URL redirect. Link rot is already visible across pjtime, big-bit and older Sina mobile mirrors.

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 Community Sources CVD Guides
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CVD Community Sources: Forums, Press and Archives

Where CVD knowledge actually lives

China Video Disc (CVD) never acquired a single official English handbook that collectors could treat as canonical. What survives is a scattered archive: VideoHelp and AnandTech threads from the early 2000s, a handful of Doom9 and Ubuntu notes, Chinese newspaper pages from 1998 preserved on Guangming Daily and related sites, later Chinese retrospectives on dead VCD brands, and a thin set of Western technical guides headed by Jukka Aho’s Super Video CD overview. This post maps those communities and documents by what they contribute-not as a raw link dump, but as a research map of who argued what, when, and with which technical claim.

English-language forum memory

VideoHelp carried the densest English CVD conversation. SatStorm’s 2002 guide “CVD: What is it, how to test it & what to expect!” remains the practical entry point: history summary, a 352×576/480 encode recipe at 2,520 kbps, Region 1 player caveats, and C-Cube chip discussion. Adjacent threads compared CVD with DVD quality, debated whether “70% PAL / 30% NTSC” compatibility claims matched lived experience (including posters who said they had “never found” a working NTSC CVD player), and planned CVD-to-DVD migration while arguing over 44.1 versus 48 kHz audio on CD media and whether CD-R readability differed from format support on machines such as the Sony S560D.

Authoring threads preserved the hobbyist toolchain. Users shared Cinema Craft Encoder closed-GOP CBR recipes at 2,520 kbps and Kwag templates when VCD/SVCD/CVD encodes “none look great.” GNU/Linux writers documented jpeg2yuv / mpeg2enc / mplex stills and vcdxbuild menus. A 2024 VideoHelp thread still walks modern ffmpeg interlaced SVCD burning, showing that the authoring problem did not end with Nero-era Windows guides. Rip threads cover IsoBuster M2F2 extraction, vcdxrip, and VCDGear; subtitle threads contrast CVD versus OGT player support and recount an 1,800 kbps subtitle anecdote; burning threads compare Nero and VCDEasy compliance. Player-shopping threads name multi-format decks such as the Sampo DVE612 and note Apex dropping VCD. One laserdisc thread even records the recurring naming confusion between CD Video (CDV) and China Video Disc (CVD).

Outside VideoHelp, AnandTech threads called CVD the “best quality to size ratio” while warning it was “less compatible than SVCD,” sometimes citing an 80% compatibility anecdote, and debated picture quality against VCD with claims that CVD used “48 kHz audio” and TMPGEnc two-pass VBR. Those “48 kHz” remarks conflict with the 44.1 kHz Layer II practice documented for CD-based CVD and are kept as forum wording, not as a corrected specification. Doom9’s archive holds early CVD-style encode experiments framed as “SVCD with VCD resolution with MPEG-2.” Ubuntu Forums preserve a vcdxrip –nofiles tip for ripping to AVI workflows. The GNU help-vcdimager list (November 2001) discusses OGT subtitle IDs 0x70-0x73 and CVD subtitle compatibility-evidence that subtitle semantics were already a reverse-engineering problem, not a finished IEC story.

What forum consensus is worth

Forum numbers are observations, not standards. Compatibility percentages (70/30, 80%, “never found one”) must be kept as conflicting community claims. Encode recipes at 2,520 kbps document what hobbyists could burn, not what 1998 Chinese publishers necessarily pressed. Chip and player anecdotes are leads for hardware identification, not a substitute for decoder datasheets. The value of the threads is that they preserve test procedures, tool names, and disagreements that official marketing never recorded.

Chinese press archive, 1998

The primary documentary spine for CVD’s commercial year is Chinese newspaper coverage:

Date Paper Headline (short) Key content
21 Feb 1998 光明日报 Guangming Daily ’98影碟机市场… VCD service war; Beijing Blue Island stock
16 Jul 1998 文摘报 Wenzhai Bao CVD面世一月起风波 9 June launch; five makers; C-Cube; regulator warning; 65% share claim
22 Jul 1998 生活时报 Shenghuo Shibao 揭开CVD的面纱 (杨明贵) Jinzheng view; “first Chinese industry standard”; seven makers; prices
29 Jul 1998 生活时报 Shenghuo Shibao CVD是中国的“DVD”吗 (莫春) Market survey; 400 lines; 4 channels; Beijing meeting; Aido/SAST on sale
30 Sep 1998 光明日报 〈超级VCD系统技术规范〉11月初实行 SJ/T 11196 announced; effective 1 Nov
3 Nov 1998 光明日报 CVD与SVCD之争由标准转向市场 Seven-point CVD vs SVCD comparison; CVD 2000 project
16 Dec 1998 光明日报 PC业与VCD业之比较 CVD-SVCD war as marketing; joint 超级VCD promotion
20 Dec 1998 文摘报 Wenzhai Bao 超级VCD：自掘坟墓？ (王健生) Compatibility war; interference codes; 280 vs 350 lines

Read as a sequence, the press arc moves from February’s ordinary VCD retail competition, through July’s CVD launch controversy and Jinzheng/Aido/SAST market talk, into September’s national Super VCD specification announcement, then November’s market-stage comparison and investment language, and finally December’s sceptical pieces that treat the CVD-SVCD fight as marketing while documenting interference codes and line-count claims (280 versus 350). Authors named in the digests include 杨明贵, 莫春 and 王健生-useful when tracing reprints. Launch-maker counts in July (five versus seven) and line-count rhetoric (400-line maker claims versus 280-line hostile framing) are themselves open disagreements elsewhere in this series; the press table is the citation spine, not a reconciled timeline.

Later Chinese retrospectives

After the format wars cooled, brand obituaries and technology essays kept returning to the VCD generation. Examples include Sina Tech’s 《六大品牌今安在？》 (10 February 2004), a People’s Daily digest 《与VCD一同谢幕的大佬们》 (1 August 2012), Zhihu and Sina Finance pieces on Aido (2018), chengww’s 《VCD–国产专利之痛》, and dwenzhao’s 《VCD的历史机遇与回响》. These are secondary for technical parameters but primary for what happened to launch brands and how Chinese writers later explained patent and market failure. Use them for company fate and political framing; prefer 1998 Guangming Daily / Wenzhai Bao / Shenghuo Shibao pages when parameters or dates conflict.

Western guides and documentation

Jukka Aho’s Super Video CD Overview (2001) is still the main English-language history covering CVD, SVCD and HQ-VCD, including Chaoji VCD requirements language. GNU VCDImager documentation (vcdimager.texi, vcd-info.texi) and the cvd-subtitles.pod note are the structural references for disc layout, tool options and CVD subtitle reverse-engineering. mjpegtools man pages and the MJPEG HOWTO document mpeg2enc/mplex profiles; ffmpeg documentation covers -target presets; DeVeDe / DeVeDeNG FAQs discuss CVD disc type and limitations. Windows-era guides on digitalFAQ and VideoHelp explain VCDEasy; xpt.sourceforge pages summarise VCD/SVCD/DVD differences and OGT selectable-subtitle workflows; Linux.com and O’Reilly’s Linux Multimedia Hacks describe VCDImager and cdrdao authoring paths.

Period and interpretive pieces round out the shelf: Russil Wvong’s Video CD FAQ for PC playback and Hong Kong distributors; noulakaz.net’s 2004 “China Video Disc” essay on CVD versus SVCD quality arguments; VideoLAN’s wiki page on CVD subtitles for VLC decoder behaviour; pctechguide’s SVCD digital-video article (an alternative history that must be cross-checked against Aho and Chinese press); and planetenumerique’s French “SVCD, la petite histoire,” which discusses CVD backers. Use these guides for tooling and vocabulary; prefer 1998 Chinese press and SEC C-Cube filings when the guides disagree about commercial history.

Gaps still empty

Several high-value Chinese channels have not yet been searched for CVD material: Xianyu (闲鱼), Taobao second-hand, Douban collector groups, Baidu Tieba (影碟机吧, VCD吧), and Bilibili teardowns. Trade magazines of 1998-电子报, 家用电器, 电子世界, 视听技术-are likely sources of model numbers and reviews but remain unread here. CNKI (中国知网) journal articles on 超级VCD/CVD have not been queried. Internet Archive captures of c-cube.com from 1998-2000, which may hold CVD decoder product pages, have not been mined. By contrast, eBay, Kongfz, JD and Suning were searched and returned no CVD-specific listings.

Community source work for CVD is therefore unfinished by design. The existing English forums preserve how Western hobbyists encoded and tested CVD-style discs; the 1998 Chinese newspapers preserve how the format was launched, regulated and competed with Super VCD; the tool manuals preserve how discs are structured today; and the empty Chinese second-hand and trade-press shelves are the next places a named player model or labelled disc is most likely to surface. Until those shelves are searched, catalogue and hardware posts in this series must keep inventing nothing: cite the thread, the newspaper, or the tool manual, and leave the gap visible.

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 Community Sources EVD Guides
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EVD Community Sources: Forums, Press and Archives

Where EVD knowledge actually lives

Enhanced Versatile Disc (EVD) never acquired a single official English handbook that collectors could treat as canonical. What survives is a scattered archive: English trade-press pieces from 2003-2006, Chinese encyclopaedia and FAQ pages, contemporary Sina and PjTime reporting, a thin set of enthusiast forum threads, and SEC exhibits from On2. This post maps those communities and documents by what they contribute, not as a raw link dump, but as a research map of who argued what, when, and with which technical claim.

English press spine

Date Outlet Title / content
18 Nov 2003 EDN (Junko Yoshida) “China unveils its own video format”: VP5/VP6, LSI DoMiNo, McIntyre quotes
24 Nov 2003 EE Times / EDN “China’s EVD spec enters digital video fray”: codec options, AVS, “reincarnation of VCD”
Nov 2003 CBS News (AP) “China Declares War On DVDs”: Wang Jingchuan, ¥2,000, 25 patents
25 Feb 2005 The Register “China favours EVD over DVD”: standard, 3C lawsuit
Nov 2006 EE Times (Cai Yan) “EVD backers try to reignite interest”: MPEG-2 MP@HL, sales, single chip vendor
6 Dec 2006 AP (Fox News, NBC) “China tosses third competitor into DVD format war”: 54 players, ¥700, 2008
Dec 2006 TechRadar “Chinese to challenge Blu-ray and HD DVD”
2003-2009 SEC EDGAR (On2) Contract exhibits and arbitration disclosures

Read as a sequence, the English arc moves from November 2003 launch coverage that foregrounded On2 VP5/VP6 and LSI Logic, through 2005 standard-and-lawsuit framing, into November-December 2006 relaunch coverage that named MPEG-2 MP@HL, roughly fifty-four players, and a roughly ¥700 price band. Those codec stories disagree across years and must stay side by side in technical posts; the press table is the citation spine, not a reconciled specification. On2’s SEC EDGAR trail is the primary Western document set for contract terms, arbitration dismissal and settlement language.

Chinese press and reference

Source Content
Chinese Wikipedia 增强型通用光盘 Timeline 1999-2005, AACS, PC player, ST/NME/AVS deals
Baidu Baike evd Dazhong experience hall, price history, HD-EVD 2008, alliance structure, HVD rivalry
c114 通信百科 EVD EVD-8700 only model, nine-member alliance, royalty figures, Jindian Global
E-World FAQ “EVD科普知识问答” (siga.org.cn) Brands on sale, prices, shareholders, HD claims
PjTime “何为EVD？EVD与HDTV的区别在那？” (2007) Five software packages, EVD388/EVD8830, publishers, ExAC score
ZOL reprints and interviews “何为EVD” (2009 reprint); Zhang Baoquan interview; “三大民族品牌高清碟机标准之争”
Sina (2005-2006) ¥3-5 discs; five measures; crisis and relaunch cluster around Dec 2006
PjTime / Nanfang Daily (Aug 2007) “EVD 的梦该醒了” collapse piece
Yicai “EVD盟主倒了” Shinco restructuring
big-bit 28615, 12870, 6138 Alliance meeting; EVD camp contradictions
Huaqiang hqew 107924 E-World backers, Hao Jie interview
gzhifi (2008) “带你认识什么是高清EVD”: 14 first titles, “true HD”
Sohu 2019 retrospective “十年风雨路，中国影碟机的辉煌和陨落”
Douban note 876697066 Collection of EVD/HDV/HVD news reports

Chinese Wikipedia and Baidu Baike are secondary synthesising pages: useful for chronology and for names of halls, alliances and HD-EVD 2008 branding, but they must be checked against Sina, PjTime, EE Times and SEC when dates or codec claims conflict. The E-World FAQ on siga.org.cn is the closest thing to a vendor self-description of brands, prices and HD claims. PjTime’s 2007 explainer remains the densest single Chinese technical overview for software packages, named models (EVD388, EVD8830), publishers and ExAC talking points. c114’s encyclopaedia entry preserves the early “EVD-8700 only model” retail note and alliance/royalty language that hardware posts rely on.

News clusters matter as clusters. Sina’s March 2005 ¥3-5 disc promise, October 2005 “five measures,” September 2006 crisis reporting and the December 2006 relaunch burst are contemporary temperature readings, not later nostalgia. Nanfang Daily via PjTime in August 2007 (“EVD 的梦该醒了”) and Yicai’s Shinco restructuring piece document collapse and corporate aftermath. big-bit alliance reports and the Huaqiang Hao Jie interview preserve internal-camp friction language, including the “Hao Jie incident” still listed as unresolved elsewhere. gzhifi’s 2008 “true HD” piece is the source for Jindian’s fourteen-title first release claim. Douban note 876697066 is a collector-assembled clipping file for EVD/HDV/HVD reporting rather than a primary newspaper.

Later reprints

CSDN (2009) and 中国视听网 (2010) reprints of E-World-related material keep FAQ language circulating after original pages move. Prefer the earliest live or archived copy you can find when wording conflicts. ZOL’s 2009 “何为EVD” reprint and standards-battle features likewise often echo PjTime and FAQ text; use them for discovery, then walk citations back.

Forums

Forum Thread Note
非常发烧网 (hifi168) “EVD,大家听说过吗?有谁开始使用?” (19 Nov 2003) Contemporary enthusiast reaction
隔壁网 (gebi1) “骗局还是谎言？揭露国产’高清’EVD！” Critical thread; blocked to automated access; not read
DVD Talk “Forward Versatile Disc (FVD)” FVD/Sigma press-release discussion
PjTime forum Linked from EVD articles Not searched

English enthusiast depth for EVD is thinner than for CVD or SVCD. hifi168’s 19 November 2003 thread catches Chinese enthusiast reaction within a day of the Great Hall launch. The gebi1 critical thread is logged as existing but unread because automated access was blocked. DVD Talk’s FVD thread is adjacent Taiwan-format discussion, not EVD primary evidence; it belongs on the related-formats shelf. PjTime’s own forum links from EVD articles remain unsearched and are a natural next pass for model and disc anecdotes.

Gaps still empty

Several high-value Chinese channels have not yet been searched for EVD material: Xianyu, Taobao, Baidu Tieba (影碟机吧, 高清播放机吧), Bilibili teardown videos, CNKI journal articles, CNIPA patents, archived evd.cn and jdglobal sites on the Internet Archive, AVSForum and CDFreaks threads. Those remain the places a named disc 版号, a board photograph of LSI Logic markings, or a surviving PC-player installer is most likely to surface.

Community source work for EVD is therefore unfinished by design. English trade press and On2 SEC filings preserve the Western launch and contract story; Chinese FAQ, encyclopaedia and Sina/PjTime reporting preserve retail, alliance and collapse language; forum threads preserve enthusiast suspicion and excitement; and the empty second-hand, Tieba, CNKI and Archive.org shelves are the next places catalogue and hardware posts should look before inventing titles or chip part numbers. Until those shelves are searched, cite the article, the FAQ or the SEC exhibit, and leave the gap visible.

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: