The Forward Versatile Disc arrives...in Taiwan
You didn't think the battle over which high-def disc format is going to succeed DVD would be confined to just Blu-ray and HD-DVD, did you? A simple two-way format war would be way too easy, and we'd almost completely forgotten about another contender, the Forward Versatile Disc, which had its formal launch yesterday. First announced almost a year ago, FVD is a new red laser 11GB disc format dreamed up by a Taiwanese consortium that uses Windows Media Video 9 to squeeze in a couple hours of high-definition video. It's doubtful that FVD will get very far here in the States, given the number of tech heavyweights and movie studios which have already lined up behind either Blu-ray or HD-DVD, but FVD is getting a big push in Taiwan, mainly because FVD discs and players are supposed to be a lot cheaper to produce than HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs and players (also there are no royalties to pay to the Blu-ray or HD-DVD camps). Don't expect to ever see a Sony or Toshiba FVD player, but a bunch of Taiwanese manufacturers like Tatung, Sampo, and BenQ have committed to the new format and there are even two companies we've never heard of, Actima Technology and Actima Electronics, that already started making FVD players.
