DVD-Rs coming this winter...................
globalsources.com
First batch of DVD recorders expected by yearend
JAPAN ? The market for DVD-video recorders, designed as potential replacements for consumer VCRs, is slowly emerging with promises of releases from Pioneer and Sharp as early as two months from now. There is some confusion, however, over recording formats.
The announcements were made at the IFA in Berlin, where prototypes were displayed. Pioneer Electronic was the first to announce plans for a new DVD video recorder. It will be using a new format, called the DVD-R/W, another candidate for the industry's standard rewritable DVD format. It will be released first in Japan this November once the details of a real-time [read/write] recording (RTR) format are nailed down within the DVD Forum this fall.
Sharp, which also supports the DVD-R/W format, presented its prototype DVD-R/W video recorder. According to a company official, the Sharp recorder will hit the Japanese market at the end of this year priced in the $1,850 to $2,300 range. Introduction in the United States and Europe will follow in next year.
The DVD-R/W format, however, is neither compatible with DVD+RW, which was developed by Philips to add video-recording capabilities to DVD players, nor with DVD-RAM, designed by the DVD Forum as a peripheral drive for PCs to hold rewritable applications. Pioneer's DVD-R/W video recorded disk will also not play back on the current generation of DVD players, due to the real-time recording format. DVD players will need software modifications, possibly a replacement of ROM, to maintain compatibility. |
