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To: Don Dorsey who wrote (33975)	6/23/1998 1:16:00 PM
From: DiViT	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Recordable DVD Is a Long Way Off For PCs DVD+RW Contingent Gains Time 06/22/98 Multimedia Week (c) 1998 Phillips Business Information, Inc. NEW YORK - PC OEMs won't punish DVD+RW proponents for being late to the recordable media party because desktop vendors don't plan to incorporate the drives in products for at least six months. Executives with Micron Electronics Inc. [MUEI] and Compaq Computer Corp. [CPQ] told Multimedia Week they will not ship desktops with recordable DVD this year. Neither company is even at the stage of evaluating which format - the 2.6 GB DVD-RAM or 3 GB DVD+RW - is a better desktop option. And if Micron, the first PC maker to ship DVD-ROM last June, does not have recordable DVD on its road map, likely no other PC market will jump on the market. Neither recordable DVD format will show up on desktops in any kind of volume until Spring '99, if then. Micron and Compaq executives cited the technology's high price and lack of backward compatibility with DVD-ROM media as the main obstacles to incorporating the drives. On the DVD-RAM front, Hitachi Ltd. and Panasonic Industrial Co. [MC] are shipping drives in the United States. Toshiba America Information Systems Inc. is shipping in Japan and expects to make them available in the U.S. in the next two weeks. The few manufacturers sourcing those drives, primarily jukebox makers, are paying about $275 each for them, MMW has learned. That's roughly three times the cost of a DVD-ROM drive complete with MPEG-2 decoder .. Werner Glinka, senior director of marketing for Hitachi America Ltd.'s optical storage group, acknowledged demand for DVD-RAM is taking longer to build than he expected and said the company's orders are coming from vendors looking to build servers and storage systems for enterprise customers. Panasonic announced last week a deal to offer DVD-RAM as an option for corporate customers buying Informix Corp. [IFMX] Dynamic Server for Windows NT. Panasonic also is supplying drives to Creative Technology Ltd. [CREAF], which began selling a DVD-RAM upgrade kit on the Web for $500 last month. Companies planning to ship DVD+RW appear in no hurry to get drives or media into the market largely because of success they're having with rewritable CD drives (CD-RW). Mikel Dodd, chairman and CEO of Philips Optical Storage [PHG] an estimated 2.5 million CD-RW drives were sold last year. He expects 6 million to ship this year and 15 million in 1999. "We can't build the drives fast enough," said Robert van Eijk, Philips' strategic marketing director. To meet CD-RW demand, Philips is joining forces with Mitsumi Electric Co. Ltd. of Japan, the second largest manufacturer of CD-ROMs worldwide. The companies will collaborate on development and manufacturing for optical storage products including CD+RW and DVD- ROM. In the first half of 1999, Phillips will begin volume manufacturing in Mitsumi factories. Philips expects to offer a CD+RW drive in the next few months with 24X read capability and foresees a combination DVD-ROM and CD-RW drive coming to market before a DVD+RW drive. DVD+RW timetable Of the six companies planning to ship DVD+RW drives or media, Philips is the only one yet to commit to a shipment date. The manufacturer expects volume drives to be available sometime in 1999, van Eijk said. Seiji Matsumoro, general manager of Yamaha Corp.'s electronic systems division, would not say when the company will offer sample drives. Takeshi Matsui, Rico Co. Ltd's corporate councilor of the disc media and systems product division, said Ricoh has "no concrete plans to make [DVD+RW] products." In May Sony officials said they would ship a drive this year (see MMW, May 18) but last week Toru Takeda, acting general manager of Sony Computer Peripheral and Components Co. appeared to back off from the company's earlier statement. He said technically samples could be available this year but would provide no shipment or volume availability dates. Gerry Kelly, Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. marketing manager, said his company expects to offer sample media late this year but said volume shipments are tied to drive makers' introductions. Manufacturers dodged questions about DVD-RAM and whether they were working with Panasonic, Hitachi and Toshiba about building drives that will read RAM and RW discs. Based on technical seminars and developer initiatives in the works, the DVD+RW crowd shows no signs of abandoning the format. DVD+RW proponents will host the first technical seminar addressing the needs of drive and chip makers on July 8 in Tokyo at the Prince Hotel from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Similar programs will take place in Europe and the United States in September or October. A Web site, www.dvdrw.org/dca, is in the works and should be up in 10 days.