Hitachi sees digital future in the home
DVD Recorder Set To Replay VCR Success
Story
Hitachi Ltd. is betting the future lies with
the digital versatile disc (DVD) recorder,
which it sees as the biggest potential
moneymaker since the videocassette
recorder. Riding the digital wave, it aims to
turn its audiovisual-equipment division
into a profit-making operation, focusing
on the development of products for
moving pictures, an area in which it enjoys
a technological advantage.
By coming up with exciting innovative
products, Hitachi also hopes to dispel a
widespread view that it is lacking in
consumer appeal and slow in introducing
new products.
Digital televisions were Hitachi's main
exhibit at the international consumer
electronics show held in the U.S. city of
Las Vegas in early January. However, in a
private room open only by invitation, the
company had a DVD recorder on display.
With a 4.7-gigabyte DVD-RAM, the device
is reportedly capable of recording
high-quality images and features an
advanced search function. Hitachi aims to
commercialize the product by 2000,
company officials said.
Hitachi's strategy for digital consumer
electronics has primarily been focused on
the development of products using
moving-picture technologies. The company
has taken this approach in the belief that
moving pictures can convey the richest
and most complex information content of
all communications formats.
Among Hitachi's digital electronics
products using motion-picture
technologies are an MPEG camera and a
digital TV already on sale in the U.S. and
the U.K. MPEG is a widely used digital
compression standard developed by the
Moving Picture Experts Group.
An optical-disc camera, another product in
the pipeline, will be able to capture images
that can be played back on a DVD
recorder. The company has applied
technology used in the MPEG camera to
the development of the optical-disc
camera. But unlike the camera, sold
primarily to professional users, the
optical-disc camera will be targeted at
individual consumers, the officials said.
The company is also focusing efforts on
equipment for digital networks. Hi-tachi
has been supplying digital-network
technologies since 1995, when the
company introduced an integrated
receiver/decoder for DirecTV, a U.S.-based
satellite broadcaster, in cooperation with
Thomson Consumer Electronics Inc., a
French company that is the largest TV
maker in the U.S.
In 1997, the company developed the
world's first chip for an all-format decoder
for 18 terrestrial digital broadcasting
modes that recently started operating in
the U.S.
Hitachi expects that, in an age of digital
consumer electronics, viewers will record
moving pictures received via digital
networks on a DVD player or a D-VHS
player.
The company plans to develop display,
storage and networking equipment in
anticipation of the arrival of the digital era,
the officials said. The key issue for Hitachi
is marketing, however, since the company
is seen as lagging such industry leaders as
Sony Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial
Co. and Pioneer Electronic Corp. Analysts
doubt whether the company's slogan, "
Here, The Future," introduced three years
ago for its audiovisual products, helps to
enhance consumer recognition of Hitachi
as a leading maker of such products.
As part of a larger reorganization drive,
Hitachi in April will adopt a company
system under which digital home
electronics will be controlled by the digital
media group. The company hopes the new
organizational structure will help speed up
decision-making and product development
and create an environment conducive to
originality.
<<Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Inc. --
03-15-99>>
[Copyright 1999, Nikkei America]
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