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In many ways, you are correct about DVD not taking off until it's recordable. Most people see it as a VCR replacement, and want it to record before they buy one. Those that see it as a laserdisc replacement already have one, but those are not that large in number, laserdiscs never took off like VCRS. And DVD recordable media promises to be vastly more expensive than videocasettes, at least initially. The DVD player manufacturers have not tried very hard to get DVD as a CD player replacement, but eventually I think we will see DVD changers to play music (and discs will probably will contain music videsos as well).
That being said, the initial market for DVDs is the PC market, as programs get so big they require five CDs (Riven, for example), DVD is the perfect format. Not too long ago, I upgraded my 40 MB hard drive to an 80 MB and thought I had some space. Now you can't buy less than a 2 GB drive, and it's just going to get bigger. Software companies need a new format for the behemoth programs they are writing, and DVD makes perfect sense. I don't think it needs to be recordable in PCs, since the DVD readers are backwards compatible with CDs, and are a good replacement as the trend goes forward. |
