Consumer Electronics Holiday Plans
(11/23/97; 11:38 a.m. EDT)
By Junko Yoshida, Electronic Engineering Times <Picture>Is a picture worth a thousand bucks? Consumer-electronics companies are betting that enough consumers will think so this holiday season to snap up digital satellite receivers, digital still cameras and DVD players at total outlays that exceed the sacrosanct $500 consumer price point.
Couch potatoes have more choices than ever. As new digital-satellite-service providers such as Echostar's Dish Network jump into the DirecTV-dominated digital-satellite market, potential subscribers can choose from a swelling array of programming packages and digital set-tops. And after a seemingly interminable wait, DVD players are hitting the U.S. consumer market, accompanied by a fast-growing selection of movie titles.
The digital still camera is likely to remain a hobbyist product, since it requires some initiative on the user's part to get off the recliner, snap pictures and possibly connect the camera to a PC to edit, print or transmit the images. Nonetheless, the newer digital stills, priced well below $1,000 and designed for easier PC connectivity, may make appealing holiday gifts for computer-savvy family members.
In each of the three most heavily marketed product categories this shopping season--DVD, digital satellite and digital still cameras-the price tags on the equipment alone are generally a palatable $500 or less. When application software, playback titles or broadcast-subscription services are added to the mix, the offerings require an outlay from $500 to more than $1,000. Yet companies perceive a sufficient market for all three product categories to keep expanding the range of available models and features.
Here's the dish on satellite
Since first hitting the home market two years ago, digital satellite receivers have become strong sellers, and that has attracted new market players.
Set-top boxes designed for the Dish Network are incompatible with those used for DirecTV; the former is compliant with the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) standard, while the latter uses proprietary transport-layer decoding. But the selling point here is the service: Most consumers will shop for a service package and then consider what box they need to get the desired programming.
Today, satellite receivers for DirecTV are offered by several companies, including Thomson and Sony. JVC entered the digital-satellite-decoder market this year with a set-top for Echostar's Dish Network.
One twist in the digital-satellite market this year is the emergence of digital VHS (D-VHS) videocassette recorders that incorporate interfaces for receiving digital-satellite services. JVC, for example, has combined a Dish Network tuner and a D-VHS recorder in one unit; Hitachi has a D-VHS VCR that provides a DirecTV interface. While D-VHS is hardly a household acronym, if it takes off it could boost the satellite market by opening the door to recording of satellite broadcast programming, just as cable programs can be recorded today.
The product concept is pretty straightforward. D-VHS VCR allows bit-stream recording of digital broadcast signals in their original digital state (compressed MPEG-2, Dolby Digital and so on). When playing back a D-VHS tape used for recording a digital-satellite program, the recorded bit stream is handed over to the set-top box for decoding.
The D-VHS VCR will maintain backward compatibility with conventional VHS, making it possible to record and play back regular analog TV programs or rental movies recorded on ordinary VHS tapes. Capable of recording 44.4 Gbytes of data per D-VHS cassette, the system allows up to 7 hours of MPEG-2 digital video with digital audio per cassette at a fixed bit rate of 14.1 Mbit/second. Promoters say it will also allow recordings of broadcast data services in the future. Such data, recorded in bit streams, could then be directly transferred from the D-VHS VCR to a PC.
DVD: vaporware no more
Consumers who have been hearing about DVD but have yet to see proof of its existence will find ample players on the market this season. About 20 different brand names, including Panasonic, Toshiba, Sony, Philips and RCA, are competing on the U.S. market. Each vendor has fielded a range of models, with varying features at varying price points.
Pricing ranges from under $500 for a bare-bones system to upward of $1,000 for a loaded model. Although audio-CD capability is not a requirement for DVD compliance, expect all DVD players to play audio CDs.
Consumers should shop on the basis of audio and video output quality as well as linear PCM sampling support. The DVD format supports audio quality up to 24 bits/96 kHz linear PCM, but not all players' internal D/A converters will support 96-kHz sampling. Those that don't will usually down-sample 96-kHz soundtracks to 48 kHz. That's an issue for audiophiles but probably not for the typical consumer.
Only a few DVD audio titles are available, and on the Japanese market. Classical music is typically recorded at 24 bits/96 kHz.
As for video quality, those who already own a high-end display system should make sure that the DVD player they choose offers a component video output for the highest-quality video.
Close to 200 movie titles are already available, ranging from classics such as Dr. Strangelove and The Wizard of Oz to such recent hits as Jerry Maguire, Space Jam, Twister and Fargo.
A wild card for the 1998 DVD market will be a system called Divx, which will allow "rented" movies to be played back over a 48-hour rental period. Divx service requires a special player that must be connected to the Divx central office via modem, and consumers must pay video-rental fees ($5 per rental period). Divx has been proposed by Circuit City and a Los Angeles law firm to create a rental market for digital-video titles.
Production studios, which have expressed some interest in Divx based on its reportedly superior copy-protection system, may prove more willing to release their titles in Divx format than to put them on DVD disks. But there's a downside for users: A consumer can't own a Divx disk and use it freely in any player. DVD and Divx disks look the same but are not interoperable.
Matsushita, Zenith and Thomson have announced plans to field Divx players next year, and Disney, Paramount, Universal and Dreamworks are committed to launching titles in the format |
