Recordable DVD Formats Emerge
(10/02/98 5:05 p.m. ET)
By Andy Patrizio, TechWeb
BURLINGAME, Calif. -- The battle between digital
versatile disc and Divx has left more than a few
consumers confused, and the multiple rewritable DVD
formats are only going to make things worse.
Fortunately, a clear picture emerged from various
working groups at the DVD Conference 1998 on
Friday.
By the end of the year DVD-R, DVD-RW, and
DVD-RAM all should be able to write 4.7 gigabytes of
data to a disk. Now, DVD-R and DVD-RW can only
save 3.9 GBs of content, while DVD-RAM holds just
2.6 GBs.
DVD-RAM is a purely consumer medium meant to
compete with high-capacity removable storage like
Iomega's ZIP and Jaz drives, according to Dana Berzin,
marketing manager for DVD-RAM products at
Panasonic, a division of Matsushita.
DVD-R is a write-once form of DVD, whereas
DVD-RW is rewritable. Neither disc format is intended
for consumer release. Rather, they are for content
authors who want to write a sample disc and test it
before stamping a final DVD-ROM, since DVD-R and
-RW both use a similar method of storing data as the
DVD-ROM discs, according to Robert Duncan, senior
project engineer with Matsushita.
A DVD-RW disc can be rewritten about 1,000 times
over the course of its life, whereas a DVD-RAM disc
can handle more than 100,000 rewrites. DVD-R and
DVD-RW drives are expected to cost between $5,000
and $15,000, and DVD-RAM drives on the market
cost between $500 and $600, said Berzin.
DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM have the backing
of the DVD Forum. But Sony and Philips broke from
the Forum last year and introduced a competitive
format, DVD+RW, which stores 3 GBs of content.
Sony and Philips plan to release a DVD+RW drive in
1999.
Later this year, vendors including Panasonic will
introduce newer DVD-ROM drives that read all
versions of recordable DVD: DVD-R, DVD-RW, and
DVD-RAM.
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