What's Up, Doc? DVD Meets the Web
By Steven Von der Haar, Inter@ctive Week, 7/13/98
The bridge to the broadband world is paved with silver discs.
At least that's the vision of Jim Banister, a vice president at Warner Bros. Inc. He's betting $1 million this year that next-generation compact discs, called digital videodiscs (DVDs), can serve up the broadcast-quality audio and video needed to spice up the online experience --- even for users with slow dial-in connections.
"For years, we have been searching for an economical way to send rich multimedia to Web viewers," Banister says. "Now, we have the way."
The path is DVD, a disc that has the look-and-feel of a typical compact disc but can store up to eight times more data, cramming between four hours and eight hours of high-grade video onto a single platter. Using systems designed by Hyperlock Technologies Inc. Warner Bros. plans to serve up content that can be retrieved from the disc only after a viewer visits its Web site.
Such a scenario should sound familiar. For the better part of tile 1990s, content developers have been trying, with little success, to marry the capabilities of CDRoms and the Web.
So-called "hybrid discs" arc littered with Web links that have gone largely unused. For whatever reason, few disc users wind up clicking on the Web connection, essentially torpedoing the business plans of developers aiming to make extra dollars bv sending their users online.
But hope springs eternal at least at Warner Bros. Later this year, the company will release a DVD title dubbed Drive-On, which offers a look at backstage stories at the Warner Bros. movie studio.
While the company is spending $1 million to $1.5 million on the project, even Banister is unsure which business model wi II work best for DVD. Users must visit a Warner Bros. site to get the keys to unlock content stored on the DVD. The company could sell targeted Web site advertising, subscriptions for the keys to unlock content or both.
Banister is counting on expectations that the computer will be the first window for delivering DVD content to the mass market. DVD players for the computer will outnumber those bought to hook into a television set by a 10-to-1 margin in five years, according to Forrester Research inc. estimates.
Even if the business model busts, the DVD can be a learning laboratory that will help content developers prepare for a future in interactive television, says Ted Pine, president of InfoTech Consulting Inc.
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