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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Helios who wrote (47669)	11/20/1999 11:47:00 AM
From: John Rieman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

DVD-recordable players due late next year................ e-town.com HOME DVD-R DELAYED Battle at COMDEX on formats and compatibility 11/18/1999 By Doug Olenick LAS VEGAS, NV, November 18, 1999 -- For the majority of consumers, VCRs will remain the primary recording device for the foreseeable future. Philips, Panasonic and Hitachi reported at COMDEX that, contrary to previous reports, they would not ship a DVD home player/recorder until late 2000. PC-based DVD-R, on the other hand, took a giant stride forward at the show. The three companies mentioned above revealed their plans for 4.7GB recordable DVDs -- DVD-RAM in the case of Panasonic and Hitachi, and DVD+RW for Philips -- but none of them intends to rush the products to market. The 4.7GB discs and drives are capable of recording two hours' worth of MPEG-2 digital video. This lengthier recording time is necessary if DVD-R for the home is to become ubiquitous; current DVD-RAM/DVD-R formats can record less than two hours' worth of material. Panasonic and Hitachi's DVD-RAM drives are expected to be in stores by mid-2000, while Hitachi's DVD+RW devices should follow about six months later. Not only do the companies' rollout schedules differ, but their views on what type of rewriteable drive will draw customers is as different as the technologies. DVD-RAM discs reside in a cartridge which is inserted in a drive, whereas DVD+RW media works just like an audio CD -- no cartridge is required. In addition, the two formats are incompatible with each other -- that is, a DVD+RW disc cannot be read by a DVD-RAM drive, and vice versa. Differing DVD-R views Panasonic and Hitachi see DVD-RAM initially as a PC peripheral for small businesses and consumers who require large amount of storage capacity, not as a VCR replacement, said Marco Truppi, Panasonic's marketing manager for multimedia products. Panasonic now ships DVD-RAM drives for these customers, who can burn single-sided 2.6GB and dual-sided 5.2GB media. The price of the new 4.7GB DVD-RAM drive has not been finalized, but it should be comparable to the $899 price tag now carried by the 2.6GB DVD-RAM drive. Panasonic's movie player plans are still not complete, but Truppi said that some type of 4.7GB home player should be available by the end of 2000 or in early 2001. Hitachi's future applications will include home DVD-Video recorders and DVD-Video cameras. The company expects that it will be possible to use PC DVD-RAM drives to play, edit and store videos taken with the home DVD-Video cameras. Philips is taking the opposite approach; the DVD+RW it rolls out in late 2000 or early 2001 will be a movie player. "Rewriteable DVD will be driven by consumer video applications, and the PC side will be developed later," said Robert van Eijk, vice president of Philips' optical storage division. The price of the Philips' player has not been determined. Controversy and compatibility The DVD+RW format has been the cause of turmoil for the past several weeks. Philips and its allies, Sony and Hewlett-Packard, shelved plans to roll out 2.6GB and 3GB versions of DVD+RW which would compete with the DVD-RAM products currently available. All cited low market expectations for such a product as the primary reason for the move. Sony and Hewlett-Packard were mum on their plans for 4.7GB DVD+RW at COMDEX. Philips will be at a distinct disadvantage when it begins shipping its DVD+RW drive. That's because the number of DVD-RAM players (both 4.7GB and 2.6GB) shipped by then will have reached about 1.4 million, according to Panasonic. Philips' van Eijk said that he could not be certain at this point what the impact of those sales would be on his format. "At the end of next year we will find out," he said. Philips also battled industry rumors at COMDEX. In an attempt to squelch gossip that 4.7GB DVD+RW is incompatible with today's DVD-Video players, the company held a technology demonstration on Tuesday wherein a DVD+RW drive was usedto create a recording on a 4.7GB disc. The disc was then played in eight different commercially available DVD-Video players as well as in a Compaq PC. Van Eijk noted that the players were bought the morning of the demonstration. DVD-RAM is also facing a challenge. Currently, its 4.7GB media cannot be read by most of the installed base of DVD-ROM drives. (The smaller-capacity DVD-RAM drives, however, do not have this problem.) This means DVD-RAM drive owners can share their data only with other DVD-RAM owners. Truppi said that Panasonic, Philips and Hitachi were working on solving this problem; they are now shipping DVD-ROM drives which are capable of reading 4.7GB DVD-RAM media. The three companies are responsible for the majority of DVD-ROM production in the world. Panasonic is uncertain whether 4.7GB DVD drives will fully replace the 2.6GB and 5.2GB drives now on the market, nor if the two capacity technologies will ever coexist. Truppi did estimate, though, that the 4.7GB variants would comprise about 50 percent of the 1.3 million DVD-RAM drives expected to ship worldwide next year.