The DVD Forum will go into hybernation after 15 years of operations.
The members of the DVD Forum have approved the decision mimimize the activities of the organization by April 1st. The industry body, which was established in 1997 to launch the DVD format, may be also reactivated as necessary to address issues that may arise in the future.
Prior to the decision, the DVD Forum had decided to simplify its membership system and management necessary to maintain the DVD Forum as an "open Forum". In addition, the organization had voted that DVD players and discs sold in the Baltic Countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) should be coded as either Region 2 or Region 5 or as Region 2 and 5.
Last june, the DVD Forum members also approved the granting of "copyright and trade secret permission" to the Chinese standards organisation for the China HD DVD Physical Format specification. This permission is conditional on format developers OMNERC and BOC "renewing the Agreement and the License Agreement with the DVD Forum and DVD FLLC respectively, under the basic terms and conditions as in the previous Agreement and License Agreement."
The organization also decided to downscaled its Steering Committee (SC) to three members, one member each from CE, IT and Content Industry. The current Technical Groups (TVG and WG) will be closed.