Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: DiViT who wrote (24609)	10/29/1997 4:40:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

Inside Multimedia is out for 10/27. DVD-ROM to disappoint in '97............................ DVD-Video on course; Rom lags behind <Picture><Picture> First year sales of DVD-Video players are on target to exceed 700,000 worldwide, with more than 600 titles on release by year end, according to Julie Schwerin, president of US market research firm Infotech. However, Schwerin says that while sales should be considered a success, they have fallen short of early hype. UK consultancy Understanding & Solutions, which organised the DVD Forum conference, predicts that, in Europe, a mere 0.28m DVD-Video payers will be in use by the end of 1998, rising to 0.7m by 1999 and only 10.72m by 2005. Nevertheless, U&S's Jim Bottoms said that the success of DVD was now "a question of when, not if." Meanwhile, sales of DVD-ROM drives have lagged industry expectations. Worldwide drive shipments, Infotech predicts, will reach 500,000 in 1997, an attachment rate of less than 1 per cent on new PCs - thanks to delays in licensing copy protection technology to PC OEMs, lack of OS support and compatibility problems. This has led publishers to hold off on DVD-ROM title launches. Nevertheless, Infotech predicts falling costs will lead to widespread inclusion of DVD-ROM drives on new PCs by 1999, but not mass title launches. "Until 2m drives are installed, it's risky to go ahead with titles," says Schwerin. With or without titles, DVD-ROM players will succeed thanks to backwards compatibility with CD-ROM drives. Hence Understanding & Solutions offers upbeat expectations on DVD-ROM hardware sales in Europe. It expects 2.75m DVD-ROM drives to be in use in Europe by the end of 1998. By 1999 it predicts that 9.2m (12 per cent) of the 79.43m PCs in use in Europe will have DVD-ROM drives, rising to 80.2m (57 per cent) of a total 140.57m PCs in 2005. Some interesting light on CD replication industry trends comes from an internal report prepared by Ablex using information from Understanding & Solutions, BPI, EPS, Datamonitor, UBS and many others. The report predicts growth in the size of the UK market at greater than 10 per cent per year, with a predicted growth of 29 per cent in 1999 due to the expected surge in demand for DVD. If accurate, this forecast implies that DVD has little replacement impact on conventional CD-ROM, rather that it is taking market share from videocassette. It is certainly true that in many sectors, like covermount or software delivery, it is difficult to see any significant role for DVD, given that DVD-ROM drives are backwards compatible. In the weeks following the Divx announcement, Infotech surveyed prominent US consumer electronics retailers. It found that awareness of Divx and the competing forms of recordable DVD is low at present. However, more than 75 per cent of survey participants said their customers were aware of the impending arrival of HDTV in 1998 - Julie Schwerin, Infotech president, interpreted these results as "a hopeful sign that Divx may not confuse the industry," and pointed out that, at any rate, it would be 6-9 months before the tehnology came to market.