Toshiba/CUBE didn't say how long you could record for....Cebits site had this Hitachi interview up........
eBIT News: What are Hitachi's plans DVD in Europe.?
Kubota: We will carry applications for
both the computer and entertainment
business. However, probably we will start
from the computer peripheral business --
DVD ROM drive or DVD RAM drive.
CeBIT News: Some companies have
already launched DVD ROM in Europe
even though there is little software. You
haven't been tempted to launch early?
Kubota: No we haven't. We are actually
producing one hundred thousand DVD
ROM drives a month. We are mainly
supplying these to the major PC
manufacturers in the USA. There is not
much DVD ROM software available so far but PC manufactures are
putting in DVD ROM drives in some high end models as a replacement for
the CD ROM drive expecting the amount of software to gradually increase.
CeBIT News: Do you think more should be done to help the DVD software
market develop?
Kubota: In the US market they have already launched DVD video, the
entertainment software. There are already more than six hundred titles in
the market and even now by using DVD ROM drives, by adding an MPEG
board, the customer is able to watch them, through the PC.
CeBIT News: Do your drives normally include an MPEG decoding chip
set?
Kubota: No not in the ROM drive. In any case with Pentium II Intel has
a sort of "higher grade" of MMX processor and as speeds increase, this will
allow software decoding. In that case no additional board is needed.
CeBIT News: When will that happen?
Kubota: In the US some companies have already introduced software
decoding. Some major PC companies are already offering this software on
their machines.
CeBIT News: DVD video has been promised has been promised at least
three times in Europe. How do you feel that market will develop given that
people have waited so long for this product to arrive?
Kubota: At IFA Time Warner, Sony, Phillips and some other companies
announced the launching of DVD software in the March/April time frame
of this year and after that unfortunately, we had difficulty with the
availability of the MPEG multi-channel encoding systems. As a result we
have decided to go with dual format with MPEG 2 multi-channel and we
have added Dolby AC3 which is already in the US market. So we are
hoping the software will appear in April.
CeBIT News: So when you launch a DVD video player in Europe will it
have AC3 built in, or will it just have some form of digital out with
customers buying their own decoding equipment?
Kubota: I don't think so. Both systems should be incorporated in the
player. Since the format has been decided in such a diverse way the player
absolutely has to incorporate both systems for playback. Both systems will
be incorporated inside the player. That's Hitachi's strategy.
CeBIT News: Lets talk about recordable DVDs. What is your position on
RAM and the DVD+RW from Phillips, Sony and others. Are you supporting
that technology?
Kubota: No we are not supporting the Sony/Phillips format. We are only
supporting DVD RAM which is officially approved by the DVD consortium.
In fact we are just starting the mass production of DVD RAM drives in
Japan and we have just started launching it on the Japanese market. We
will discuss with our sales force in Europe when we will launch here.
CeBIT News: Do you see DVD RAM being for computers of for the home
consumer market?
Kubota: So far we are concentrating on computer applications because
even the huge recording capacity of 2.6Gbytes is still not enough for the
digital recording of the TV program or something like that.
CeBIT News: To record you are going to need an MPEG encoding chip
aren't you?
Kubota: DVD video for the movies uses MPEG 2 compression. However,
this is very carefully treated. An average picture transfer rate will be about
3.5 Mbits/s. But for recording TV programmes you need real-time
encoding. In that case the 3.5 is not enough. Digital broadcasting in
America and, in the very near future, in Europe with DVB, uses a mean
value of 6 Mbits/s. All the current definition systems, such as NTSC and
PAL, will need that type of digitalizing needing around 6Mbits/s. In that
case the recording time will be shortened. The current DVD disc will hold a
maximum of 135 minutes but DVD-RAM can only record slightly longer
than one hour, we do not think people will accept that. It is of almost no
use. The US market, and particularly in the European market with it's
love of soccer, would reject this solution. You really need a
more-than-three-hour format for the product to be successful.
CeBIT News: Will DVD RAM drives be able to read CD R and CD RE?
Kubota: They will be able to read the whole CD family.
CeBIT News: Even the recordable and re-writable?
Kubota: We can read re-writable CD's but not record them.
CeBIT News: But in Europe quite a lot of the machines that are coming
out now have warnings on them that they will not be able to read CD R. Is
that a temporary state of affairs?
Kubota: That means that they must be very old 1 x, first generation DVD
drives. They must have a small number of old DVDs and they will change
over soon to second generation DVD rom drives all of which are compatible
with CD R. you don't have to worry about those kind of things.
Cromac was right, bring on those VCR-PCs with hours of storage.... |
