The Ministry of Information Industry (MII) will issue the industrial standard for the home-developed EVD (enhanced versatile disc), a next-generation disc format that will hopefully replace the currently popular DVD (digital versatile disc), in November.

The launching of such a standard signals that China, for the first time, establishes what is expected to help domestic disc player manufacturers shake off their previous dependence on foreign technologies in production, experts said.

"As far as I know, the MII will issue the standard next month," said Zhang Yijun, deputy chief engineer of the Shanghai-based SVA Group. "We are quite confident in the next-generation digital disc technology, where we will possess our own intellectual property," he said.

Talks with domestic and overseas filmmakers and other video programme producers are under way regarding the market supplies of programmes stored in the EVD format, Zhang said. Players powered by EVD technology are expected to offer as much as five times the quality of image definition compared with DVD players that dominate the market at present, and that is EVD's biggest advantage over DVD technology, according to experts.