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

To: BillyG who wrote (36462)	10/2/1998 4:15:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

DVD grows faster than VHS and CDs............................ techweb.com DVD Adoption Outpaces VHS, CDs (10/01/98 5:04 p.m. ET) By Andy Patrizio, TechWeb BURLINGAME, Calif. -- Market acceptance is happening much faster for DVD than it did for VHS and the compact disc, leading proponents to predict it will become the top format for both PCs and home video. Where it took years to settle concerns about cable and VHS, Hollywood joined the DVD bandwagon soon after the format was introduced. The result has been rapid growth of DVD as a home-video medium. Since DVD was introduced in September of last year, the installed base has grown to 1.2 million players worldwide, with 850,000 sold this year. Twenty consumer-electronics companies offer a total of 40 different models in 10,000 outlets, including K-Mart and Wal-Mart, with 1,700 titles for rent in 5,000 outlets. Warner Home Video has already sold $135 million in DVD movies since the format was introduced. "The evolution of this market is occurring exponentially," Warren Lieberfarb, president of Warner Home Video, said at DVD Conference 1998. "DVD is truly the first product that represents the convergence of the television and the PC." The younger generation views the PC with a DVD-ROM drive, as their media platform, according to Lieberfarb. "It's going to be their typewriter, their calculator, their stereo system, their television, their game machine, it's their all-in-one player," he said. "And that generation is adopting DVD video as one of the most significant applications that drives their interest in DVD-ROM with PCs." DVD-ROM is selling much faster than DVD home-video players, with 8 million to 10 million projected to be sold this year and five times that much next year, according to Dan Russell, director of platform marketing for Intel's desktop products division. Russell touted the combination of DVD and the PC for entertainment and multimedia. "You have the surround sound and great visual quality of DVD, together with the benefits of interactivity that the PC gives you," he said. Koji Hase, general manager of Toshiba's DVD division and chairman of the DVD Forum, said the forum is working on increasing the capacity of both DVD-R, or write-once DVD, and DVD-RAM, which is rewritable, so both will be at 4.7 gigabytes of capacity, the same as the DVD-ROM drive. The forum is also finalizing the DVD-Audio specification. All three specs are set for release by the end of the year, and products based on those specs should be available by late 1999, said Hase.