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

To: CPAMarty who wrote (24944)	11/7/1997 7:36:00 AM
From: Bill DeMarco	Respond to of 50808

More on the DVD-RAM issue..... Drive Vendors Fight Over DVD-RAM Format Sony/Philips and NEC Abandon Industry Standard by Dan Costa Originally published in the November 1997 issue The DVD standard has gotten complicated again, as not one but two rivals to the existing DVD-RAM specification have emerged. Flouting the standard established by the DVD Forum industry alliance, Sony and Philips announced in August 1997 that they would pursue their own rewritable DVD format. Days later, NEC said that it, too, would go its own way. While the Forum's DVD-RAM standard (already used by pioneering drives such as Hitachi's GF-1000) supports 2.6GB of storage per side; the Sony/Philips solution will store 3GB per side. NEC hopes to leapfrog both these formats with a disc capable of storing 5.2GB per side. While this confusion will probably put off the finalization of a DVD-RAM standard, it shouldn't affect mainstream consumers much, says James Porter, president of the Mountain View, Calif., market-research firm Disk/Trend. "A very small slice of the user base will ever get DVD-RAM," says Porter, comparing the technology with the mostly vertical-application-oriented CD-R and CD-RW. "DVD-RAM is really targeted at multimedia development." The squabble will have no effect on the DVD-ROM drives and stand-alone DVD players now on the market, since both past and present members of the DVD Forum have agreed to continue to support the DVD-ROM standard. Indeed, DVD-ROM sales are expected to increase steadily, Porter says, adding, "DVD-ROM sales will completely replace CD-ROM sales in the next three years." Even as the DVD-ROM debate flared up, HBO Home Video, MGM Entertainment, New Line Home Video, and Warner Home Video all announced they were expanding DVD movie availability from limited test markets to retail outlets throughout the U.S. As for rewritable DVD, what's left of the forum is trying to bring NEC back into the fold. Sony and Philips, however, are seen as unlikely to give up the royalty investments they have made in their 3GB standard. Until the conflict is settled, do-it-yourself disc-mastering users must settle for the 650MB capacity of CD-R and CD-RW. Meanwhile, with magnetic-storage prices falling to pennies per megabyte, Porter says time is not on the side of DVD-RAM vendors. "By the time these guys finally get out there with a 4.7GB rewritable DVD," he predicts, "hard drives will be in the 20GB to 30GB range." Optical Drives Spinning Up Worldwide Forecast Shipments (in Thousands) 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 CD Format Drives (Read-Only)* 55,570 66,753 78,179 88,455 99,181 CD Format Drives (Rewritable)* 1,419 2,240 3,116 3,901 4,702 Read/Write Drives (Under 2GB) 1,398 1,783 2,049 2,100 1,813 Read/Write Drives (Over 2GB) N/A 924 68 196 432 CD format drives include CD-ROM and DVD types *Read/write drives include write-once, rewritable, and multifunction types Source: 1997 Disk/Trend Report