DVD-Recordables..............................
emediapro.net
Industry News
The COMDEX '99 Storage Scene: DVD+RW Retreats, RAM Ready to Roar? We're Listening...
November 24, 1999
Copyright ¸ Online Inc.
Is it possible that Comdex is losing its grip on the high-tech industry? Ask me and I'll tell you that the show appeared less crowded than any of the last few years. Even the long-standing use of the Sands Expo basement for the smaller multimedia booths was done away with, perhaps replaced by a bit more space upstairs on the main floor. There still appeared to be far fewer 10x10' booths than ever. More vendors were also meeting prospective clients at hotel suites rather than the show floor. Perhaps the high cost of floor space is driving vendors to economize at the show; maybe the big expo model is showing its age. Either way, none of that's not to say that there wasn't interesting technology on display. There was--just not as much of it as in the past.
For the digital content storage market, 4.7GB DVD-RAM was the belle of the ball, with all three RAM manufacturers-Panasonic, Toshiba, and Hitachi-all showing models that mirror DVD-5 capacity. Panasonic's drive is now promised for mid-2000 delivery. All the RAM vendors reported increasing interest in a "Super MultiRead" spec for drive vendors to support DVD-RAM as well as other flavors of DVD and CD. This would bode poorly for delayed-again DVD+RW. If new 120mm DVD-ROM drives support DVD-RAM as well as the other formats, DVD+RW's unique compatibility edge will be lost. The question remains, however, whether this "Super MultiRead" concept can be implemented at a price the PC integration market will be willing to swallow.
Meanwhile, the +RW camp claims to have bigger fish to fry. Philips made a strong play to show DVD+RW as a consumer digital recorder medium, rather than a desktop or network storage device like DVD-RAM. They promoted the format for readability in all past and future DVD-Video players, which no one is even currently predicting/ for RAM. Philips went so far as to demo DVD+RW readability in five players bought that day from Las Vegas stores. (It worked.)
Joining the GF-2000 4.7GB DVD-RAM standalone drive at the Hitachi booth was the GF C100, a nifty DVD-RAM mini-changer with a five-disc capacity. This 1X (1.38MB/sec), SCSI-2 unit will offer 13GB of storage with a 2.6GB DVD-RAM drive or 23.5GB with a 4.7GB drive.
TEAC showed off their new 4x4x32 CD-RW drive and some gem-like "compact"-sized readers and recorders. TEAC says this is a strong growth market, particularly with many notebook computers lacking internal CD or DVD drives. Joining TEAC with an 8X desktop recorder on display was Yamaha, who debuted their 8x4x24 drive.
Smart and Friendly became the first on the block to boast 12X speed as they showed off the internal and external versions of their new MACH 12. When recorders made the jump to 8X, media compatibility was slow to follow, and hopes haven't been much higher to date for current or upcoming media products to prove reliable at 12-speed. However, both Kodak and Taiyo Yuden showed media brands promising 12X support, including 74-minute discs from both companies and 80-minute media from Taiyo Yuden.
Also causing quite a stir at the show this year was compact removable storage. Sony's Memory Stick technology debuted to oohs and ahhs. This solid-state cartridge is about the size of half a stick of gum (1" by 3") and about 1/16th of an inch thick. Holding from 32 to 256MB of data, it is intended as a new standard for digital cameras, audio recorders, and PDAs. (The 256MB version isn't due to ship until sometime in 2000.) A commendable list of other vendors are proposing to support the standard in all these areas. The most enticing use was Sony's own Memory Stick Walkman. At 2 ounces and 1x4", in size, it has to qualify as the most portable music player ever.
IBM countered with a tiny hard drive with 40-80MB capacity. Iomega also touted its earlier announced Click portable disc drive as a preferred standard for removable storage. Several other vendors offered flash memory as well.
Back on the read-only side was our old friend Afreey, self-proclaimed high-speed champion of the CD and DVD drive world, which had on display several new drives including a 10X DVD-ROM and 56X CD-ROM unit. They also gave out a benchmark positioning their CD-2056E as the world's fastest drive. On closer examination, the results show the standings after taking the average of the drive's data transfer and Digital Audio Extraction (DAE) rates.
These numbers come from a worthwhile benchmarking site called CDSPEED (http://come.to/cdspeed), where you'll find that the Afreey numbers are now dated. The new chart shows Kenwood's latest TrueX 72X drive blowing them away with a 37.6X average for both data and DAE.
Behind the scenes, the rumor mill continued to speculate on which of several second-tier vendors would come out with a DVD-R drive to compete with Pioneer's. No one would go on record, but the increasing sales of the Pioneer drive are attracting attention. Apparently the big challenge isn't in reducing price for DVD-R, rather it is in overcoming the current limited life span of the recording head. (Pioneer claims about a thousand-disc recording life span for their drive.) Unless that barrier can be improved, the cost of replacing heads will continue to price the product out of the range of the average consumer, even when the initial sticker price comes down.
In the real world, MicroBoards is now offering an all-in-one desktop DVD-R system, the DVR-1000. This includes a 3.9GB Pioneer reader and an inkjet DVD-R printer with a future upgrade to 4.7GB when it ships. Speed estimates places it at about one hour per 4.7GB disc.
Quantum showed off their SnapServer division (the former Meridian Data) to good effect with the new Snap Server 1000, now priced at $499 for 10GB of compact hard drive storage. (Could it be that the lower-cost Quantum drives gives the Snap a boost?) At that price, the cost of MIS time just to install more hard disk space in a server is more than the Snap Server itself.
On the jukebox side, long-time European presence Asaca has at last positioned itself to enter the U.S. market with the acquisition of an aggressive stateside reseller, Net Source. These DVD-RAM libraries currently have the largest capacity in the industry-1450 discs-for a total of 7.5TB in one library.
JVC also showed their upgraded libraries, which now use DVD-RAM drives (versions hold 100, 200, or 600 discs.) Like NSM, JVC also provides upgraded media (from Maxell) with a special coating to resist scratching the bare DVD-RAM media. Unlike the Asaca, which has a flipper mechanism, the JVC units support single-sided only media.
But the show wasn't all hardware by any means. Network and jukebox management software were represented by Software Architects, which showed WriteDVD, a utility for Win95/98 systems to both read and write DVD-RAM. (Remember, Windows has no native drivers for DVD-RAM, and so will see it only as a CD-ROM device.)
For DVD authors, INTEC America brought DVD AuthorQuick for both DVD-Video and DVD-ROM authoring on Windows NT. MicroBoards continues to offer the upgraded tool as a low-cost standalone or as part of a hardware/software combo called the DVD AuthorSuite. The AuthorSuite uses the INTEC software with a Zapex encoder and a Pioneer S201 4.7GB DVD-R recorder. Astarte gmbh also had its DVDirector solution on display with a newly updated feature set, alongside a new $999 production tool called DVDelight. Completing the show's DVD creation offerings were Gear Pro DVD 2.0 and a new version of Ahead's Nero Burning ROM, to premastering tools now delivering DVD-R capability.
-- David Doering |
