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To: J Fieb who wrote (29490)	2/14/1998 7:53:00 AM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

DVD-recordables.............................................. February 16, 1998, Issue: 1404 Section: Technology/ Storage Directions ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Standards Wars Delay Rewritable DVD Rick Cook Faced with a leadership vacuum at the top, rewritable DVD is getting off to a late, slow start. Standards wars in the critical area of rewritable DVD are resulting in mass confusion that will probably set computer DVD back at least a year. And no single vendor has been able to gain the critical mass necessary to blast through the confusion. "It's a shame this situation has developed. It will inhibit the development of the whole market until it gets resolved," says Bob Katzive, vice president of DiskTrend Inc., a Mountain View, Calif., market research firm. Ray Freeman, president of analyst firm Freeman Associates Inc., Santa Barbara, Calif., agrees: "The multiple standards have an inhibiting effect on market development." VARs are taking a wait-and-see attitude. "I've told our customers don't screw with [rewritable DVD] until a decision is made [on a standard]," says Jerry Morsaki of Lawrence Imaging Systems Inc., a $130 million imaging VAR headquartered in St. Louis. Other VARs feel the same way. "There's a lot of concern out there that [rewritable DVD] isn't stable," says Jim Jenkins, president of Concorde Technologies Inc., a $14 million VAR in San Diego. No less than four competing formats for rewritable DVD have been announced so far: DVD-RAM, approved by the industry consortium DVD Forum; the rival DVD+RW from Sony and Philips Electronics N.V.; Pioneer New Media Technologies Inc.'s DVD-R/W format; and the MultiMedia Video File Format (MMVFF) proposed by NEC Corp. All are backward-compatible with existing CD products, including CD-ROM and CD-R. The main difference between DVD-RAM and DVD+RW is that DVD-RAM records 2.6 GB per side, DVD+RW records 3 GB per side and DVD-R/W records 3.95 GB on a single side. Some manufacturers such as Hitachi are already offering double-sided DVD-RAM solutions, which can hold up to 5.2 GB. Meanwhile, NEC has announced it will commercialize its MultiMedia Video File Format for DVD products this year. MMVFF promises to store 5.2 GB per side in its initial release, with capacity climbing to 8 GB and eventually, with a different (blue) laser, to 16 GB per side. But MMVFF is something of a wild card because, at the end of last year, NEC had no actual products, although it says it expects to ship products this year. By contrast, DVD-RAM companies such as Hitachi will be shipping production drives by the time you read this. DVD+RW makers say they'll be shipping by summer, while Pioneer says it will start shipping DVD-R/W products once the standard is approved. The competing camps don't see the different standards as a serious problem, though. According to Werner Glinka, director of marketing for Hitachi America Ltd.'s Computer Division in Brisbane, Calif., a more critical factor is that DVD-RAM has a months-long lead on DVD+RW. By the time DVD+RW arrives in quantity, he says, DVD-RAM's position will be secure. "The customers will see a broadly supported medium and drive, and go for it," predicts Glinka. DVD+RW group members say that a few months of lead time won't make much difference this early in the cycle. They expect most people to wait before settling on a DVD rewritable technology. Freeman Associates predicts sales of some 420,000 rewritable DVD drives this year. But VARs seem in no hurry to commit their customers to either side. "We've been waiting for DVD for over a year," says Morsaki. "A little more time won't make a lot of difference." Copyright (c) 1998 CMP Media Inc. New Search \| Search the Web You can reach this article directly here: techweb.com

To: J Fieb who wrote (29490)	2/14/1998 11:36:00 AM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

The EU just doesn't like digital settop boxes. Now looking at BiB and BSkyB............................................... EU says British Interactive Broadcasting set-top boxes limit competition: source ------------------------------------------------------------------------ European Commission believes the British Interactive Broadcasting venture's set-top box technology could exclude competition in this digital interactive TV market, EU sources said. The venture between British Telecommunications PLC, British Sky Broadcasting Ltd, Matsushita Electric Europe Ltd and Midland Bank PLC was notified to the commission in June last year, the sources said. 'The commission has received a large number of replies to our notice seeking comments in August, which raised a number of fundamental concerns about the infrastructure of the arrangement,' a source said. 'BiB's control over the set-top boxes could exclude competition. BiB may also benefit from the subsidy of BSkyB's core market of pay-TV,' he said, noting most complaints have come from cable TV firms. Unlike in other member states where broadband telecom networks are being set up by telecom operators, BT sees the BiB infrastructure meeting BT's network capacity limitations, the sources said. 'BT as a result of BiB will be less pushed to upgrade its own network. It has publicly said that the BiB service overcomes in the mid and long-term its capacity limitations,' a source said. The commission's concerns over decoder technologies follow similar concerns in digital TV cases in Spain and Germany where the commission wants to avoid gateway operators dominating the market, he said. The source was unable to say what timetable is planned for discussion with BiB on possible remedies to meet the commission's concerns. 'We identify bottlenecks [in networks] but it is not for us to identify remedies,' he said, noting this is for BiB to do. [NT 16-1-98] c EuroInfoTech Brussels 29 January, 1998 Issue 0163