DVD-RAM's success not yet assured
By Junko Yoshida
TOKYO - While demand for DVD-ROM drives will soon kick into high
gear, thanks to surging volumes of Intel Corp.'s Pentium II and the debut
Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 98, writeable DVD-RAMs will grow more
slowly than anticipated for both PC and consumer applications, according
to Koji Hase, general manager of Toshiba Corp.'s DVD division. The big
issue is not the market's various incompatible rewritable formats, but rather
applications, Hase said. The industry needs to identify irresistible
applications for DVD-RAMs and then sell them to PC users, he said.
Developers of standalone rewritable DVD products for a consumer market
"should probably rethink their old notion that DVD-RAM can be simply
sold as a replacement for VHS," Hase said. "Up until two years ago, I think
many of us genuinely believed in that scenario. But I'm telling my product
development team now that it won't be that easy."
The day the trusty old $200 VHS VCR disappears from the consumer
market is still a long way off, he said. Second, the copy protection issue
could totally change home recording as we know it.
"With DVD, I think the industry has opened Pandora's box," Hase
observed. Through efforts of a cross-industry group like the Copy
Protection Technical Working Group - composed of Hollywood studios,
consumer electronics companies and PC software and hardware vendors
- a series of much tighter copy protection technologies is being developed.
These include copy guard, encryption, authentication and watermarking.
Compared with CD-ROMs, from which virtually anything can be lifted,
DVD will offer much better copy protection for owners of copyrighted
materials.
Hase, however, called such technologies a "double-edged sword." As the
industry tightens up on copy protection, "the day is approaching fast when
we could no longer receive any content worth watching or saving for free."
In short, by the time DVD-RAM becomes a prevalent medium to record on
at home, consumers won't enjoy the abundance of free, over-the-air movies
they are seeing today. All the valuable digital content will come encrypted,
at a price.
Among the research mandates for rewritable DVD is the development of
unique applications that could give consumers immediate convenience and
satisfaction by letting them shoot something with a DVD-RAM camcorder
and play the disk back on a DVD player or DVD-ROM drive on a PC -
all in the same format.
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