History of Development
Super Video CD was developed as part of a late 1990s Chinese government-sponsored effort to create a next-generation CD-based video standard. The primary motivating factor was the need for an alternative to the DVD format that would not be restricted by technology royalties. The Chinese government was concerned that the DVD format was too tightly controlled by foreign companies, and that a significant opportunity existed for the development of a domestic format that could deliver comparable quality without the restrictions of DVD. It was also hoped that SVCD's development would help to drive down the cost of consumer DVD players and DVD licensing fees in China. Three independent efforts attempted to solve these problems: CVD, SVCD, and HQ-VCD.
China Video Disc (CVD), developed by C-Cube Microsystems (a major producer of chips for Video CD players), was the earliest entry, having completed its specification in 1997, before the other two had even reached a draft stage. Super Video CD (SVCD) was second, being developed by the government-backed China Recording Standards Committee, under direction from the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry, with technical support from ESS Technology. High-Quality Video CD (HQ-VCD), developed by the Video CD Consortium (consisting of Philips, Sony, Matsushita and JVC — creators of the original Video CD specification) was a relatively late entry.
The Chinese Ministry of Information and the Video CD Consortium agreed to join forces, incorporating the features of HQ-VCD under a unified SVCD format. But by the time the SVCD specification was ready in July 1998, CVD had already been adopted by major manufacturers and had quickly established a significant installed base of about 600,000 players. This prompted the Chinese government to force a compromise between the competing standards in order to maintain compatibility.
The SVCD and CVD standards were combined into one composite standard known as Chaoji Video CD in November 1998, which was adopted by the Chinese government as the "official" next-generation video disc standard. Chaoji VCD is effectively synonymous with Super VCD. A Super VCD player must be able to play a variety of formats, including SVCD, CVD, VCD 2.0, VCD 1.1 and CD audio discs.
On July 15, 2000, the IEC certified SVCD an international standard CD format, as IEC 62107.
Philips has added an SVCD logo to its canon of official Compact Disc logos. SVCD titles are available commercially in China, Hong Kong, and several other Asian countries (except the Philippines). In the Western world, the format is more commonly used to store home videos or movies copied from DVD and Laserdisc.
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