Iomega and DVD
Of all the erstwhile IOMG "competitors" mentioned, DVD seems to crop up as the potentially most "serious". But a more careful look seems to suggest otherwise.
First, please read the excellent overview of DVD to be found at c-cube.com which is both highly readable and which forms the basis for the comments which follow.
1. Technology
It is important to understand that DVD is being optimized and targeted as an eventual replacement technology for the VCR. All technology involves tradeoffs and when one optimizes to the particular design points required by one market one is almost forced by the nature of such choices to suboptimize for other markets. The main technology behind DVD can be divided into three areas:
a. The physical media, which involves smaller feature sizes than that found on today's CD-ROMs, as well as refinements in the substrate which allows dual-layer recording per side (up to four layers for double-sided DVD media). Note that aside from the smaller feature sizes and dual-layer recording, DVD still uses a single spiral track similar to that used by CD-ROMs. This results in the need for variable-speed motors and the consequent reduction in "seek" time as compared to magnetic disks which use multiple concentric tracks. Since DVD is optimized for sequential playback of movies and similar video material, this is not a problem for its intended market since DVD seeking is hugely faster than the rewind/fast-forward functions of today's VCRs.
b. Editing/encoding devices which are used to transform video media into the compressed formats used by DVD and prepare the glass masters which are used to "press" retail DVD media. The C-Cube white paper (see ref above) goes into considerable detail about how non-trivial this process is and how sophisticated their technology is (e.g., 14 special-purpose VLSI processors operating in parallel). Obviously such technology is not being targeted at the retail market.
c. Decoding technology ("DVD players") which reads DVDs and transforms the signal back into a form usable by a variety of legacy (e.g., existing Dolby Pro-Logic systems) and new (PC, HDTV) receivers. Such players will start to appear late this year and into 1997 and should debut in the $600+ price range. Note that to realize maximum potential from DVD you'll need to upgrade your entire home theater system to be able to deal with the "native" Dolby AC-3 formats as well as the wide-screen playback modes. So viewed as a component of a $5,000+ home theater system the introductory pricing probably isn't that big a deal.
The main attraction of DVD vs. tape for the distributors is that it is much cheaper (estimated production cost of less than $1 per unit for DVD vs. $3.50 for tape). Plus it opens up the possibility of a host of new marketing angles (e.g., pay-per-view--see the C-Cube paper for details).
2. Marketing
Two things seem clear. One is that DVD will be DVD-ROM for some time. Until DVD player costs can be brought down to the sub-$300 range (target: 1999 according to C-Cube) the likelihood of this replacing CD-ROM, let alone magnetic disks, in PCs is nil. Second, simply switching from R/O pits to a recordable media (Phase change, ala PD disks?) isn't enough to result in DVD-RW. For that you also need affordable realtime encoders. As a result, DVD will intially be marketed as a home-theater playback technology, then as a high-end PC add-on replacement for CD-ROM, and much later as a replacement for the record function of your VCR and possibly as a PC storage medium.
3. Conclusions
Judging by the history of video evolution and the adoption of new technology by the consumer market, I don't expect DVD to become a major force until early next century, but that it will eventually replace videotape in the same way that audio CDs replaced vinyl. It is clear to me that the rewritable DVD still has major technical and marketing challenges ahead of it and as a result it is more a boogeyman than a real competitive threat to IOMG or any other magnetic disk media for the forseeable future. |
