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

To: JPM who wrote (26353)	12/9/1997 8:30:00 AM
From: BillyG	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

There are some differences between VCD and DVD players that lead to a higher cost for DVD players: 1. The DVD drive: A DVD drive costs more than a CD drive. The control electronics and laser pickup are different. The pits are smaller and closer together on a DVD, and the laser must be able to read two layers. As you know, CD (ROM) drives can be had for dirt cheap. 2. The DVD control electronics: The servo electronics are different for a DVD drive. The DVD servos must operate to closer tolerances for laser focus, laser tracking, and drive speed control. 3. The DVD data recovery electronics: DVD data is read at a higher data rate than VCD data. The electronics must take an analog signal from the photodetectors and demodulate it to recover the digital signal. The higher data rate (and possibly lower signal/noise ratio) results in more complex electronics. 4. The DVD/MPEG2 demultiplexer: The appropriate digital data stream must be recovered and fed to the (ZiVA) MPEG2 decoder. Maybe ZiVA performs some of this function. 5. MPEG2 decoder: ZiVA versus the VCD decoder. 6. D/A converters: The video D/As and the audio D/As both operate at higher data rates (and higher resolution?) and therefore cost more. If you have five audio channels, you need 5 audio D/A channels as opposed to 2 in VCD. 7. Memory: MPEG2 decoding requires more memory than MPEG1 decoding. 8. NTSC encoder: This probably costs slightly more for DVD than for VCD. 9. User interface: More complex for DVD. Subtitles, angle control, picture format, etc. Requires a more complex microprocessor in DVD than in VCD. Overall, a DVD player should be buildable for very roughly about $200-300. A DVD player that sells for $800 "list price" probably wholesales for $400, so the actual discounted selling price would be about $550. I may be way off on these numbers. Expect to see prices drop very quickly . . .