CHINA HD DVD - No Kidding!

As we all may know, the DVD format war was over, with Sony's Blue Ray format kicked HD DVD's ass resulting in the death of the latter. However, now HD DVD format is reappearing, only this time it's China HD DVD. No, that's not a typo. This is real. Rising from the ashes of HD DVD, the Chinese version of the format is getting ready to launch. Shanghai United Optical Disc is set to power up its production line of CBHD by the end of the fourth quarter. CBHD (China Blue High-definition Disc), recently called CH-DVD (China High Definition DVD) is similar to HD DVD, but supposedly with more robust copy protection.

Parallel with the general knowledge that almost everything is "Made in China" nowadays,
this "new" format will have lower royalty fees, and hardware should be cheaper for disc replicators. Yes, just the way things should be in China. One thing to point out is that with the emergence of this China HD DVD, imagine the potential market of billions of Chinese consumers.
It remains unclear whether this new format will get the support of the major movie studios who already committed to Sony's Blu-ray format. Now to come up with another one, would they be willing to go through the format war, again? So the guess is that the format might die quickly and quietly. You gotta give the Chinese credit for not giving up. They showed that they can do it for the Olympics, they showed it here too. Watch out, USA!