Kerry56 used our news submit to tell us "If this actually comes to market, consumer confusion over formats will be at a level never seen before, and may help slow down adoption of the newer blue ray and hd dvd standards."

This could be a powerful addition to the already impressive family backing the red laser FVD format. With support from both Taiwan's Advanced Optical Storage Research Alliance (AOSRA) along with the government based Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), if we add Microsofts publicity, customer base and money, this will truly be a force to be reckoned with.

Microsoft of the U.S. is scheduled to set up a Windows multimedia technology center in Taiwan soon and will cooperate with local software and hardware companies to jointly promote a next-generation digital versatile disc (DVD) format, the forward versatile disc (FVD), according to industry sources.

We might have to agree with the poster here and realise that with Sony, Toshiba and their two blue-laser high definition formats fighting for acceptance, a red laser HD format will only serve to muddy the waters for the average Joe. Ironically, it's this very squabbling that has created the opening for the FVD format. In addition, the process is different enough from current red laser processes, compression and decoding techniques that the general consensus is it is not subject to normal royalty rights for DVD. This would allow the local producers of optical discs and drives to enter the global market (China alone is a huge market) without paying royalty costs to the big international formats.

Just for comparison, the FVD format will be able to produce first-generation discs with a storage capacity of 5.4GB for single-layer discs, and 9.8GB for double-layer discs. The ITRI has more information and a nice table to compare FVD to DVD on this page, if you would like to read the complete specs.

Source: Taiwan Economic News