http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/34097.html

the company - formerly known as The Duck Corporation - claims.

I was going to say I've heard weirder Chinese company names but then I noticed it's actually talking about On2!

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.

If one of the goals is to save Chinese companies from being dependent on foreign technologies, EVD is unlikely to save the day. Anything I buy to replace my DVD player had better play my existing DVD collection. Instead, EVD will just be yet another feature that will need to be supported by "universal" players.

They'd be shooting themselves in the foot if it wasn't backwards compatible.

If one of the goals is to save Chinese companies from being dependent on foreign technologies,

Of course, for it to be interesting to us, they'll have to persuade the western film companies to produce content in this format.

This is unlikely to happen, unless China bans all other formats from China itself, and the film companies still want to sell into China.

On the other hand, if they're looking only at their domestic market (and I've no idea how big that is), then it'll definitely reduce their dependence on foreign technologies.