DVD Notebooks are coming, (Matsushita rolls their own, but they don't say "Chip")....................
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DVD NOTEBOOK VENDORS' INITIAL TARGET IS BUSINESS CUSTOMERS PRESSING THEIR OWN DISCS: IBM AND PANASONIC ARE FIRST TO SHIP
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Rather than wait for a flood of DVD business applications to hit the market, the first PC manufacturers to sell DVD-ROM notebooks will target business customers who make their own media and can take advantage of the drive's storage capabilities now.
Panasonic Personal Computer Co. has announced plans to ship a DVD notebook (model CF-63) in the first week of October, and IBM Corp. [IBM] will make a DVD-ROM drive an option on the Thinkpad 770 in late September, Multimedia Week has learned. IBM is expected to have limited quantities available next month and ramp volume in October.
"We're looking for a client that knows how to use multimedia to sell their product or service," said John Harris, director of marketing for Panasonic. "They know how to make money with it and probably have an existing relationship with a creative house."
"I expect it [DVD-ROM notebook] to be 8 to 12 percent of our product mix over the next 12 months," he said. "I'm really looking for 15 to 20 companies initially (to whom) we'll probably sell 100 to 1,000 units each."
With sales of 33,000 units in the first half of the year, according to International Data Corp. (IDC), Panasonic ranks No. 16 in terms of sales in the United States. The company's sales volume is about 5 percent of what market leader Toshiba America Information Systems Inc. does in business. Despite commanding a small portion of the market, Panasonic executives believe DVD-ROM will make a difference in their business and help get the ball rolling throughout the industry.
Early adoption of new technologies isn't new to Panasonic. The company shipped the first PC notebook with CD-ROM in September 1994, beating IBM to the punch by a few weeks.
The company could make inroads with the DVD notebook through the federal government, which accounts for about 30 percent of the company's sales.
Matsushita Technology
For the product's components, Panasonic is leveragng the R&D capabilities of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Panasonic sourced DVD-ROM drives and MPEG-2 hardware decoders from the parent company.
To take full advantage of the notebook's video capabilities, Panasonic will include a 13.3-inch 1024 x 786 XGA active matrix LCD. Harris said the DayBrite II LCD, which was developed in house, has a cd\m2 rating of 120, making it the brightest display on the market.
A negative of the product is that it weighs 8.7 lbs. Analysts expect the IBM Thinkpad to weigh about a pound less.
On the audio front, the company chose not to include AC-3 because of the limitations imposed by the notebook's size.
"Within the portable format you have to draw the line somewhere," Harris said.
The CF-63 comes equipped with Yamaha Systems Technology Inc.'s OPL3 chip and four speakers. Two speakers sit underneath the LCD, and two sit on the opposite side, located on the top of the closed notebook. Harris said the speakers work in concert with the audio and provide a surround sound effect. For graphics, Panasonic selected S3 Inc.'s [SIII] 86C260 controller with 4 MB of SGRAM. |
