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An Editorial About--Guess What?--DVD!
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David R. Guenette EMedia Professional, November 1997
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<Picture: [DVD Professional Conference]>Despite all the growing pains, bone-headed decisions, and complex technology and market factors that have hindered DVD's debut to date, there are getting to be a good number of DVD titles coming to market. Most of them are movies in DVD-Video. In fact, we count 415 DVD-Video titles to date, although determining whether a title is an "announcement" or actually shipping turns out to be a lot more complicated than simply looking at the release date noted and assuming that if that date is past, the title is shipped. When it comes to DVD-ROM titles, however, the news is quite different, with 120 titles standing in for a generous guess, even assuming that most are still "in development."
I find the DVD-Video numbers surprisingly high, all things considered. After all, Microsoft seems intent to continue its fumble in not supporting DVD-Video until Windows 98 and NT 5.0. And then there are the new wrinkles on DVD+RW from Sony, Philips, HP, et al., giving Toshiba, Hitachi, and their ilk acid indigestion. Not to mention the competing technologies and rumors of competing technologies that promise 6GB of rewritability, or 12GB, orname your number, all on the same fun form factor as CD, all of which have one other thing in common: they create market uncertainty. Of course, these are problems that affect DVD-ROM, and are of little concern to the DVD-Video player crowd relaxing in front of their media centers.
I suppose I could raise the problem of DVD-Video authoring today, where terrible confusion and good old misinformation overwhelm good guidance, and where authoring platforms and programs are as few in number as development costs are high.
Or too, there's that issue of the consequences of copy protection and how CSS systems make a monkey--or at least, a crippled, expensive TV--out of $3,000 Pentium powerhouses. Come to think of it, CSS makes a monkey of the consumer who is the target of the studios' insistence on copy protection, and yes, the very same studios that want people to buy their discs. What are these studios expecting? That someone will actually buy or rent the disc, and then go and make copies of it, despite the obvious negative time/cost ratio analysis?
Ah, but I've slipped back to DVD on the computer side of things again.
Not that there aren't DVD-Video-specific problems. Still unresolved, for example, is the implementation for determining where MPEG-2 license fees are going, with MPEG LA (that's for "License Authority," in Denver, and not Los Angeles) only one more step of progress, so that we now have a central, one-stop confusion shop for everyone still figuring out how much may be owed for using MPEG-2 format data.
Or, if pressed, I might just mention the flap at the recent SPA meeting, where DVD Forum member Toshiba's John Foy seemed very much to be saying that perhaps, just perhaps, each and every poor schlemiel printing up a DVD label and logo is supposed to pay up for the $40,000 license, so that he or she can apply the knowledge of the DVD spec with clear conscience, toward determining the diameter of the disc. One industry insider's email reports that the folks at Toshiba "aren't sure about marketing uses of the logo, such as ads in the newspaper for [Toshiba's DVD] products. They might not charge retailers $40K to advertise their products, being a generous bunch."
Well, considering all these factors, it is easy to see why USA Today, in a September 2, 1997 article, reports that DVD films may be heading for trouble, at least for Christmas retail season 1997, if not, indeed, for all eternity. Central to the argument is the reticence of three major film studios to pursue DVD, and most central among equals is the Disney Studio.
Why is Disney so important? Kids films are films bought, because, for reasons known only to the archangels, young children don't mind--indeed, are thrilled--watching The Little Mermaid 8,000 times in a row. Which makes kids films good candidates for purchase, since no parent wants to spend the equivalent of a year's mortgage payments on video rental fees, never mind the time and gas costs from going back and forth to Blockbuster.
Yet, despite Disney--and Paramount, and Fox--withholding their DVD blessings, and despite the limited test market releases for DVD-Video players and their relatively high costs, and--judging from the din we industry wags make, anyway--the confusion factor, DVD-Video titles are actually adding up in number, just like the optimists said.
Still, we DVD pessimists can take heart. Not only has DVD-ROM, at best, become next year's dream, but we have some excellent allies in our claims of gloom and doom. I mean, Microsoft with its heavy-handed, Windows 98-pushing avoidance of DVD format support is a terrific ace up our sleeve. And even if sense prevails and Microsoft decides not to make everyone wait until next millennium to use DVD fully, we DVD doomsayers can pretty much count on the DVD Forum to impair DVD-ROM systems, complicate and aggregate DVD development costs, and send out bewildering messages and unsettling vibes.
And then, of course, there is what we do with DVD-ROM, which, if truth be told, is pretty darn unlikely to be brilliant out of the gate, seeing that we've only half-figured CD-ROM title creation, to date. |
