Where is Matsushita getting their DVD-RAM encoder? They are sampling now................................
November 03, 1997, Issue: 189
Section: News
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Internal unit reads/writes data to 5.2GB double-sided disc -- Matsushita promises to ship first retail DVD-RAM drive in January
By Doug Olenick
New York-Matsushita fired the opening shot in the battle for supremacy in the DVD-RAM market by promising to ship the first such drive under the Panasonic brand name in January. Sony, whose competing DVD+RW is expected out in late 1998, brushed aside the Panasonic announcement, saying superior technology will obviate the first-to-market advantage.
But Panasonic officials said they believe getting a product on shelves first will give it an edge on competing formats due from Sony/Hewlett-Packard/Philips, NEC and Fujitsu.
"Right now, other formats are just proposals, while Matsushita is already there with a product," said one company executive.
Panasonic's LF-D101 DVD-RAM drive is an internal unit capable of reading and writing data to either a 5.2GB double-sided or 2.6GB single-sided disc. It is slated to carry a $799 suggested retail price. The 5.2GB disc will cost $39.95, and the 2.6GB disc will cost $29.95, said Gary Bailer, division manager for Panasonic Computer Peripheral.
The LF-D101 can read all DVD and CD formats. The drive's data transfer rate is 1,385K bps when using a DVD-RAM disk at 1x speed, while its average seek time is 120 milliseconds.
Matsushita has made drives available to PC vendors for testing. It expects the first DVD-RAM-equipped PCs to roll off assembly lines sometime in the first or second quarter of 1998.
In the OEM area, Sony and Panasonic might lose out to Hitachi, which has shipped DVD-RAM drives to vendors and expects PCs with the drives to be available in January, a company spokesman said. Hitachi's version is compatible with Panasonic's drive.
Sony, Panasonic's chief competitor, shook off the blast, saying first-to-market is not the key to winning the fight.
"Overall, success of a new technology does not depend on which technology gets to market a few months early, but rather which technology meets the needs of the customers and which technology is supported by the strongest channel players," said Dirk Peters, Sony's marketing manager of value added products, computer components and peripherals group.
One analyst agreed, saying except for early adopters, not enough end users will have any reason to buy a DVD-RAM drive.
"The DVD-RAM market is so young, the first one on the block will not have that much of a leg up. The product will still be such a novelty that being first will not be much of an advantage," said Matthew Red, an analyst at ARS Research, Irving, Tex.
Panasonic plans to market the LF-D10 as a device for video recording and for downloading data off the Internet, instead of as a standard storage product, said Bailer.
The tug-of-war between competing formats broke out in late August when the DVD Forum, a group of 10 companies working to create a standard format, partially disintegrated when Sony and Philips announced their own format. They were joined by HP. The remaining members of the DVD Forum are:Panasonic, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Philips, Pioneer, Sony, Thomson Multimedia, Time Warner, Toshiba and JVC.
Panasonic's DVD-RAM differs from CD-RW devices by offering up to 5.2GB of storage capacity, compared with the 650MB a CD-RW can hold.
Sony plans to show its version of DVD-RAM, which is called DVD+RW, at Comdex/Fall this month. Backing Sony's version is Hewlett-Packard, Philips, Yamaha, Ricoh and Mitsubishi. Sony has said its DVD+RW technology will allow 3GB of storage per disc side, and differs from the Panasonic product mainly in its random file-management and addressing scheme.
Other vendors are indicating their technologies will feature more capacity. Hitachi is working on 4.7GB of storage capacity; even larger formats are promised by other vendors, including NEC.
Sony does not have a ship date for DVD+RW, but indicated it will be in the latter half of 1998.
"Regarding the timing of the DVD-RAM launch, we feel that for the aftermarket, the key release times for products are spring [April] and fall [October]. January is not the optimum time for releasing a product into the aftermarket," said Peters.
Copyright (c) 1997 CMP Media Inc.
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