Multimedia Monitor, They just publish last months news. But the E-4 piece at the bottom is a timely reminder.........................................
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DVD UPDATE
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Ready or Not, DVD Touches Down in Europe By Tom O'Reilly
Is the DVD industry ready to launch in Europe? And is Europe ready for DVD?
Those were attendees' primary questions at the DVD Summit conference held in Versailles, France in December. And there's no simple answer to either question, according to keynote presentations and panel sessions.
The European launch of DVD-Video is scheduled for Spring 1998, but what the extent of the launch will be is uncertain. Players are beginning to make their way into European stores, but software is another matter. Only a couple of DVD-Video titles developed for the European market are complete. A major complication is been deciding on an audio standard. MPEG-2 had been the "approved" format, but the DVD Forum just added Dolby Digital.
Speakers Koos Middlejans of Philips Electronics, an MPEG-2 proponent, and Bob Auger of premastering house Electric Switch, assured attendees that the vast majority of hardware players will be able to play back either, which means developers would have their pick of the two.
Even if there is a significant DVD-Video launch in the spring, Jan Oosterveld, Philips' senior strategy director, warned attendees not to expect it to be as successful as the U.S. launch. "Don't expect next year that 100,000's of DVD-Video players to be sold [in Europe]," he said. "It's a whole different game to launch a system in Europe than the U.S."
A study published by Electronics Marketing of Japan Ltd. predicts DVD-Video player shipments of 201,000 units in Europe in 1998. Comparably, the study pegged U.S. 1998 sell-through at approximately 1.4 million.
The DVD-ROM launch is a similar situation. It's possible to buy a DVD-ROM upgrade kit or DVD-ROM-equipped PC in Europe, but DVD-ROM software in general, never mind specifically for the European market, is hard to come by.
One theme at DVD Summit was the uniqueness of producing DVD titles for the European market, and the added expense it entails. Because of the diversity of European countries, multiple language tracks are a must. In a lot of cases, the European market must decide between lowering the bit rate on a DVD-5 disc, which would result in lower quality audio and video, or using a DVD-9 or DVD-10 disc, which significantly raises the manufacturing cost. (Tom O'Reilly is a contributing columnist to Multimedia Monitor and editor of DVD Report, a sister publication belonging to Phillips Business Information)
Steag Guarantees 90% Yield From DVD-9 Line
CD and DVD equipment manufacturer Steag HamaTech is guaranteeing a 90-percent yield from its DVD-9 line, Thomas Bohme, CD/DVD product manager, told sister publication DVD Report.
DVD-9 seems to be the standard forDVD software, but most replicators believe they'll only achieve yields of between 50 percent to 60 percent.
Steag, based in Sternenfels, Germany, has been working with companies including Philips Electronics and Warner Europe for about two years to develop its DVD-9 system. Philips and Warner have been manufacturing DVD-9 discs since November, 1996. Steag is shipping a new system to Warner's European facility and also has an order from a company in Taiwan, Bohme added. A complete Steag DVD-9 system runs about $1.7 million, according to Louis Baccio, product specialist, optical disc applications division.
Steag initially sold nearly all its CD manufacturing equipment to integrators such as Kodak, Toolex Alpha and Krauss-Maffei. It has decided to take a completely different approach to DVD and will only sell its lines to replicators, according to Bohme. (Steag HamaTech, Louis Baccio, +49 (0 70 45) 41-2-21)
Pioneer Offers DVD-R/W As Extension To DVD-R
Pioneer Electronic and Pioneer Video jointly announced a proposal to the DVD Forum to extend the DVD-R format to include DVD-R/W.
DVD-R/W would allow for sequential packet writing of data on a phase-change alloy material in the recording layer of the disc. Each packet would have to contain at least 32,000B. The disc would initially hold 3.95GB of data, the same as a DVD-R. TDK, Mitsubishi, JVC and Hitachi are among DVD-R/W supporters.
Paul Dempsey, Pioneer New Media Technologies' senior vice president of marketing and sales, emphasized that DVD-R/W is not meant to compete with DVD-RAM. It will instead be targeted at the mass storage market, with the premium of sequential packet writing instead of having to write all the data at once as you do on a DVD-R. (Pioneer Electronics, Kazunori Yamamoto, 2265 E. 220th St., Long Beach, Calif. 90810-1639, 310/835-6177)
Toshiba, Microsoft Join To Give DVD Access to W98
Windows 98 will support DVD from the get-go thanks to a licensing agreement between Toshiba Corp. and Microsoft Corp. [MSFT].
Toshiba has provided a DVD decoder mini-driver and software that works with beta 3 of the OS. And Toshiba subsidiary Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. (TAEC) is making a reference design supporting those features available to OEMs.
The board, dubbed Timpani I, is a half-size PCI card with an MPEG-2 decoder, Dolby stereo and AC-3 outputs, S-Video and Composite outputs and a connector for graphics cards. It also supports CSS copy protection in hardware.(Microsoft, 503/245-0905; Toshiba, 212/596-0600)
E4 Plans Mac-based DVD Upgrade Kit in January
E4 expects to ship the Mac version of its CoolDVD upgrade kit in January. The company had planned a September 1997 release but moved up the date because of delays suppliers had bringing SCSI components and DVD Mac-compatible drivers to market. CoolDVD for the Mac will include a drive from Pioneer New Media Technologies.(Pioneer New Media Technologies, 310/952-2111) |
