DVD Players.........................................
sfgate.com
A Hot New Player
DVD vies with VCR for home viewing market
Susan Moran, Chronicle Staff Writer
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Film buffs, take note. DVD, a relatively new competitor to the VCR, offers cinema-quality sound and high-resolution video, plus on-disc extras like the director's cut of movies, foreign language dubbing and subtitles, and interactivity.
DVD players, which hook up to a TV set, hit the market earlier this year from major electronics manufacturers, including Phillips, Sony, Pioneer, Toshiba and Zenith.
Consumers who can afford the hottest quality equipment for their home theater might pay as much as $5,500 for a DVD player. But most of the machines range from $500 to $800.
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More than 300 movies -- both Hollywood blockbusters and classics -- are available on DVD discs, which look like compact discs.
You can buy DVD titles in regular electronics stores for about $20 each, or rent them for roughly the same price as VCR titles from video retailers, including Blockbuster. About a dozen movies come out on DVD every week, but the number pales in comparison to the thousands of VCR titles available. DVD is essentially a bigger, faster CD (DVD reads about 30 times faster than an audio CD) that can hold video as well as audio and computer data.
Many proponents of the innovation predict DVD will replace expensive laser discs and possibly the ubiquitous VCR. That's because DVD offers more features for watching movies. The discs hold up to eight hours of digital video -- often including extra material such as the director's cut, unreleased endings of the movie, options for multiple camera angles, and subtitles and dubbing in multiple languages.
In addition, unlike analog VCR tapes, DVD discs do not wear out.
The DVD players also have special features. Many offer Dolby Surround Sound and come with a microphone so consumers can turn them into karaoke machines. DVD players can play standard audio CDs. Some of the more expensive ones are hybrids that play both DVD and laser disc titles.
But there are some drawbacks. You can't use your DVD player to record, although new players due next year will have a recording feature. Right now the price tag is steeper than for VCRs, which start at $150. (InfoTech predicts DVD player prices will drop to $250 by the year 2000.) Many DVD titles have built-in copyright protection, which can degrade the picture quality.
Another concern is the pending arrival of a competing and incompatible technology. It's called Digital Video Express, or Divx. Another movie-on-a-disk format, Divx is expected to reach stores in mid-1998, with players costing roughly $100 more than DVD players. The problem with buying a DVD system now is that it won't handle Divx disks. Divx players, on the other hand, will be able to play DVD disks.
Nevertheless, consumers are starting to buy DVD players. The Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association expects about 400,000 DVD systems to be sold this year. International Data Corp., a market research firm in Farmingham, Mass., forecasts that 980,000 units will be sold next year.
There's also a DVD standard for computers. Computer manufacturers have begun building DVD-ROM drives into some high-end PCs. They can play back DVD movies, CD-ROMs and DVD-ROM games, which pack more interactivity and video onto each disc.
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TOP 10
Top Selling DVD Titles for 1997 (x)
1. Twister
2. Goldeneye
3. Eraser
4. Batman and Robin
5. Blade Runner
6. The Fugitive
7. Total Recall
8. Stargate
9. Long Kiss Goodnight
10. Absolute Power
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(x) through November 30.
Source: VideoSca |
