To: +BillyG (25897 )
From: +Bill DeMarco
Sunday, Nov 30 1997 2:25PM EST
Reply # of 25902
More on Recordable DVD.....
New York Times
November 30, 1997
DVD Market Breaks Out With Competing Formats
By LAURIE J. FLYNN
Recordable DVD may hold the promise of crystal-clear video, but these days the
future of the fledgling storage technology is more blurry than ever.
During the past few weeks, the latest in what has been a series of format battles has
broken out among manufacturers of recordable DVD drives, splintering their already
shaky alliances. Combined with high prices, this could mean a longer wait before
consumers can start recording vast amounts of data and video off the Net and,
eventually, from their television sets.
A DVD, which stands for digital video disk, looks like a CD, but it can hold an entire
full-length movie, giving it many times the storage space of a CD. Because of their
otherwise unmatched capacity, DVD's are expected to eventually replace both the
video cassette and the CD-ROM, though just how that will happen is under debate.
Earlier this year, the industry appeared ready to settle on a recordable technology
called DVD-RAM, a format backed by giants Toshiba, Panasonic and Hitachi, among
others. But last week, a group of five major electronics companies that today represent
the majority of CD-ROM sales -- Philips, Mitsubishi, Ricoh, Yamaha and Sony --
along with Hewlett-Packard, announced a new format for DVD recordable drives that
it claims is easier to use and more able to withstand everyday use. With that approach,
called DVD+RW, computer users insert the DVD into a DVD drive just as they would
insert a CD-ROM into a CD-ROM drive.
With the arrival of this format, analysts argue that DVD-RAM has only one advantage
over DVD+RW: it will be on the market first, for whatever that's worth, with a product
expected from Panasonic in January. But as if two formats weren't enough, Pioneer
Electronics last week introduced yet another version, called DVD-R/W. Due out next
month, that product is initially aimed at professionals who need to record vast amounts
of video, audio and data. That drive will be priced at $17,000 but is expected to drop
to about $3,000 to $5,000 by late next year.
One key difference among the three formats is capacity: A DVD+RW recordable
drive introduced by Sony can store up to 3 gigabytes of data, while DVD-RAM drives
from Panasonic will be able to store 2.65 gigabytes. Pioneer's DVD/RW drives, on the
other hand, will store 3.95 gigabytes.
Just who will win the battle nobody knows. Clearly, the industry cannot support three
formats indefinitely. But, in the electronics industry, format battles such as this are
commonplace.
"These very consumer electronics companies have been leapfrogging each other in the
magnetic optical market for years," said Ted Pine, an analyst at Infotech Research in
Woodstock, Vt. "Rewritable DVD is probably a format that's not going to be decided
by committee, but probably in the marketplace."
And besides, an even bigger obstacle to the acceptance of DVD recordable
technology than the plethora of formats is price -- at least for now. New drives
announced last week range from $800 for the Panasonic device, to $17,000 for the
Philips drive. But that is expected to change fast. By the end of next year, Philips
expects the price of its drive to drop to about $5,000, according to Paul Dempsey,
senior vice president of optical drives for the company, based in Long Beach, Calif.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Electronic equipment manufacturers are expected to sell roughly 500,000 DVD
players in 1997, making DVD one of the fastest growing technology products in recent
history.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
While the market for DVD recordable drives is growing slowly, sales of DVD-ROM
drives for PC's, which can play DVD's and CD's, and players that attach to your TV
set to play pre-recorded movies, something like digital VCR's, are brisk, particularly as
the holiday shopping season accelerates, said Richard Doherty, director of the
Envisioneering Group in Seaford, N.Y. These players, set-top boxes roughly the size
of a cable box and made by Toshiba, Pioneer and others, typically cost between $500
and $600, though some models run as low as $400, roughly the same price as a
high-end VCR.
With those low prices, electronic equipment manufacturers are expected to sell roughly
500,000 DVD players in 1997, making DVD one of the fastest growing technology
products in recent history, Doherty said. By comparison, he said, only 30,000 CD
audio players were sold in the nine months after the technology was first introduced in
1982.
For consumers today, however, the difference between a DVD player and a VCR is in
the movies. This December, there will be roughly 500 movie titles available on DVD,
compared to tens of thousands available on VHS to play on a VCR, Doherty said. The
other barrier, he said, is that rental movies in DVD format aren't generally found in
neighborhood video stores where most people shop; instead, they are sold in specialty
stores that rent laser disks.
However, the availability of popular movies on DVD is improving quickly. Beginning
next week with the DVD release of "The Lion King" and others popular kids' titles,
Disney will join the other half-dozen major movie studios to release its films in the
DVD format. By June, Doherty expects there be more than 1,000 titles available on
DVD.
Eventually, he said, DVD will start to replace VHS as the standard for recorded video,
particularly as it makes its way into camcorders in 1998, he said.
Meanwhile, manufacturers of DVD recordable devices will continue to debate the
merits of their formats. These days, analysts point out, consumers don't appear to be
paying much attention. A recent poll of customers shopping in consumer electronics
stores, conducted by Infotech, showed that only 7 percent had even heard of
recordable DVD technology.
Doherty thinks it will be about five years before consumers are swooping up DVD
recordable drives in substantial numbers. Other analysts think it will be much sooner,
though not before the format issues are worked out. "The industry is split between
those who think the market is five years away, and those who think it's two years
away," Doherty said. Either way, the picture for DVD is bound to get clearer. |
