Here's something else from the WSJ. Nothing new but it is nice to see that a mainline publication like the Journal is endorsing DVD for consumers.
Sorry if someone has posted this already. I haven't been able to read all the links in this thread today because for some reason some of the posts have caused my Navigator 3.0 to lock up.
DVD Is Great for Movies,
But Can't Record Just Yet
THE COMPUTER and consumer-electronics industries are
always looking for new storage media that can hold more
software programs, data and entertainment content. For years,
the CD, or compact disk, has been king of the hill, both in its
common audio format and the CD-ROM variant used in
personal computers. Last month, however, a challenger arrived
in stores, and the industry expects it to replace both the CD and
the CD-ROM within a few years.
This new type of disk is
called DVD, a term that at
first meant Digital Video Disk
and was then rechristened
with the clunky moniker
Digital Versatile Disk to
reflect the fact that it can hold more types of material than just
videos. DVD disks are the same size as CDs and have the same
basic shiny, silvery appearance. Like CDs, they come in two
main flavors: basic DVD, for consumer electronics playback,
and DVD-ROM, for use in PCs. And unlike videotape, both
formats are digital, meaning they store text, graphics, video and
audio in the format computers can read.
But there the similarity ends. Because DVDs are constructed
and encoded differently, they can hold roughly seven times as
much material as a CD, or about 4.7 gigabytes of digital data,
compared with about 650 megabytes for a CD. That means that
a single DVD can hold an extremely high-quality version of a
full-length motion picture in several languages with a variety of
special features. A DVD-ROM can hold a database of all the
phone numbers and addresses in the U.S., which would
normally require multiple CD-ROMs. And the DVD format has
room to grow. The technology permits disks with two layers of
data on them, totaling 8.5 gigabytes, and even greater capacity
is possible in the future.
BOTH DVD PLAYERS, which work through a TV set, and
DVD-ROM drives for personal computers are also designed to
be backward compatible. That means that they can play music
CDs and CD-ROMs so consumers needn't toss out their old
collections.
The DVD players for TV sets arrived in stores a few weeks ago,
ahead of the DVD-ROM drive upgrade kits for computers. The
latter aren't likely to appeal to any but the most technically
minded computer owners, because they will require complex
installation of two circuit boards in addition to the drive.
If you're interested, Creative Labs, the sound-card maker, plans
to introduce a DVD-ROM upgrade kit soon for about $500. It
will play both DVD computer software and the DVD movie
disks that are primarily aimed at TV-based players. But I haven't
tested any of these PC kits, and I suspect most PC owners will
wait until late this year, when computer makers plan to include
DVD in some new models and more DVD software titles will be
available.
The TV-top DVD players, however, are easy to set up and use,
and several dozen movies have already been released on DVD
by major studios, including MGM and Warner Bros. The
players -- Toshiba, Panasonic, RCA and others -- cost between
$500 and $750. Movie titles cost around $20 each. For now,
both the players and the movies will be most readily available in
a few big markets the industry has targeted, including Los
Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, New York, Seattle and
Washington, D.C. By summer, they should be plentiful
everywhere.
I've been testing a $600 DVD player, the Panasonic DVD-A100,
and the results have been outstanding. Watching movies on
DVD, from the "Wizard of Oz" to "Get Shorty" and "Twister," is
a terrific experience. Both video and audio quality are far
superior to what you get with a typical videotape on a typical
VCR. Audio CDs also sounded great on this player.
AND DVDS OFFER many more viewing options than
videotapes. Each movie is divided into sections, or chapters,
and you can jump around to various chapters at will.
Obviously, most people will ignore the chapters at first and
simply watch a new movie straight through. But later on, you
can locate a favorite scene with ease. Small sections can also be
repeated, and the still and slow motion features work far better
than on a typical VCR.
Each movie also has a menu from which you can not only select
chapters but also change other aspects of the viewing
experience, depending on what capabilities have been built into
a particular disk. On most, you can change the movie's spoken
language from English to, say, Spanish or French. You can also
view subtitles in a variety of languages, and switch between the
standard view of the movie, resized for a TV screen, and a
"letterbox" view that preserves the film's original shape.
For some films, you'll be able to see various scenes from
different angles, call up production notes and biographies of
the stars, and limit your kids' viewing to a PG version, while
adults can view the steamier uncut version on the same disk.
Not only that, but DVD disks don't wear out like videotapes and
never need to be rewound.
So far, given their cost and features, DVD players are mainly for
videophiles and movie lovers. And they have another big
drawback: Unlike videotape, you can't record onto them, at least
until a later generation arrives. So the disks could end up as a
niche product, like the larger laser disks for movies that never
found a mass market.
But if you love watching movies at home, I can say from my
tests with just the basic Panasonic unit that DVD provides a
superb experience and lives up to its early billing. |
