Chapter 618 – Super VCD
“Manager Feng, good news! Good news!”
Feng Yu held his phone away from his ears. What the hell was he shouting for?
“What’s wrong? Old Jiang, why are you so excited?” Feng Yu asked. He was also curious. Did Jiang Wanmeng make any breakthrough in his research?
“We have successfully developed MPEG-II!” Jiang Wanmeng shouted excitedly.
“What did you say?” Feng Yu was stunned.
“We have conducted research on the coding based on your requirements. The audio can reach 4 audio channels, and it is clearer and crisp. The video quality is also better. The resolution is the highest in the world. Most importantly, no mosaics will appear in the video!”
Mosaics was the error of the video’s picture quality. Colors of the part of the video were mixed, and it looks like burry squares.
Mosaics was one of the more pressing issues faced by VCD development. VCD video quality was clearer than cassette tapes, but the discs are easily damaged. Once there are scratches, the video and audio will be lagged, and mosaics will appear. The user experience will be bad when this happens.
The small cinemas and video lounges in China had feedback. After playing the same VCD several times, Mosaics will appear. The more time the VCD was played, the more mosaics will appear in the video.
Wind and Rain electronics had introduced a VCD repair solution. It is a type of cleaning solution, which could clean the VCDs and let the player read the data better. Later on, Wind and Rain introduced a new kind of cleaning solution made from Alkaline solvent and polishing material. It can be used to polish the VCDs.
Polishing will lighten the scratches, and the player could read the data better. But after polishing, the VCD will be damaged more easily. This solution was only temporarily.
If the mosaics could not be eradicated, then they must lower the possibilities of mosaics appearing. Feng Yu remembered about the Super VCD from his previous life. This technology appeared in the era between VCD and DVD. It was also because of this technology that let VCD became more popular and caused the death of VHS.
The earliest VCD used MPEG-1 technology, and the video quality was not very clear. The audio also did not have channels to choose from. This next generation technology had 4 channels to choose from. The viewers had more options for the movies’ audio. It will also have duo audio for two languages and increase the market for VCD.
Also, this new technology will increase the functions of VCD players. The VCD will have the option to play music only. This was most suitable for karaoke.
This Super VCD will also threaten the position of Laserdisc. Not only this technology will cause VHS death, but it also caused the decline of Laserdisc.
Feng Yu had asked Wind and Rain Electronic and Aiwa to conduct research on this technology together. But he never expects this technology to be developed so fast.
Feng Yu remembered in his previous life, Sony was the one who had developed this technology. Later, Sony exchanged the technologies with Philips and set the standards for this industry.
The players that were produced were not called Super VCD. It was called a DVD. That means the Super VCD and DVD were using the same players. But the DVD had more significant storage than the Super VCD.
In Feng Yu previous life, many people discovered some players could play VCDs and some could not. That’s because some of them were using Super VCD players and these players could read DVD.
There was also another advantage of this technology. Which is the increased storage of the disc? A super VCD disc could store a whole movie. It no longer needs to split a movie into 2 discs. This would save the trouble of switching disc in the middle of a movie.
Two Super VCD disc could record a concert, or one disc could store more than 20 music videos. It was a good deal for the consumers, and they will be more willing to buy music VCDs.
Feng Yu unintentionally faced Sony again. First, Aiwa’s Walkman had beat Sony and lowered their profits from their Walkman sales. Then, Aiwa introduces their CD players. It snatches Sony’s music players market share.
It also caused Nintendo to fall out with Sony. This made Sony video games business to shrink. To recover their sales, Sony had to channel their funds to set up a Video games division to developed CD-ROM game console. This was to fight back at Nintendo’s monopoly of the gaming industry.
Feng Yu remembered that at the end of this year, Sony will introduce the first generation of PlayStation. It was Sony’s most successful electronic product after Walkman. It held the record of having sales of 100 million units!
Later, PSP, PS2, PS3, and PS4 were all successful. All the models had high sales.
This year should be Sony’s best year in terms of technologies breakthrough. But in this lifetime, this year was a tragedy for Sony. Sony does not own the DVD technology anymore.
Feng Yu had asked Jiang Wanmeng to contact Fu Guangzheng immediately to apply for the patents. They must announce their player’s standards and make it the industry’s benchmark!
Someone had said that a top company will set the standards for the industry and a second rated company will sell its brand. A third rated company will sell its products, and a fourth-rated company will sell its resources. Setting the standards and benchmark for the industry was what most companies were aiming for.
Patented technologies could only prevent other company from using it in their products. It will not prevent others from making a breakthrough with that technology. Sony could always breakdown Wind and Rain Electronic’s technologies and develop new technologies.
In Feng Yu’s previous life, many companies fought for the industry standards for several years. All the companies’ products had different technologies, and all of them wanted their technologies to be the industry’s standards. These companies include Toshiba, Pioneer, etc.
In the end, all the companies realized it will not end well for them if they carry on fighting against each other. If two influential companies fought against each other, some other company would take advantage of this. That’s why all the companies stopped.
But sometime later, the companies started to compete against each other for the DVD players and many DVD encoding technologies were introduced.
In the current life, these electronic giants’ technologies were all outdated. Wind and Rain Electronics had introduced the VCD first. Wind and Rain electronics had the advantage in R&D. Also, other companies’ businesses were diversified. They were not concentrating on developing one product like Wind and Rain. For instance, Sony was also developing PlayStation at the same time. Toshiba and other companies were researching digital cameras and computers. They were not focusing all their efforts on one product.
Wind and Rain Electronics was different. Feng Yu does not want Wind and Rain to enter the computer industry. He had Lenovo’s shares after all. The digital camera market will be a massive market in the future. But currently, the resolution was not good enough to replace film camera. Digital cameras will only be accepted by the consumers after the resolution was over 1 million.
That will only happen at the end of the century. At that time, Wind and Rain Electronics could just exchange technologies with other companies to get what they want.
2 weeks later, Wind and Rain Electronics held a press conference in Beijing to introduce their high storage multimedia disc’s technologies. They also told the press that Wind and Rain Electronics had successfully developed MPEG-II technology. The first generation of Super VCD will be introduced to the market at the end of the year!