A couple of DVD articles -- (1) DVD promo & sales take off, and (2) DVD for notebooks.........
techweb.com
DVD, Divx Promotions Kick In For Christmas
(11/06/98 4:49 p.m. ET)
By Andy Patrizio, TechWeb
With less than two months left until Christmas, the two
dueling digital-video formats are jockeying for
consumer acceptance.
DVD, the first out of the gate, has finally surpassed
the 1 million-sales mark, according to the Computer
and Electronics Marketing Association (CEMA). Last
week, 94,527 DVD players were shipped to U.S.
retailers, bringing the grand total since the launch in
March 1997 to 1,033,984.
October was the biggest and best month yet for DVD,
with 163,074 units sold. CEMA is impressed with the
number, saying DVD has outpaced CDs and VCRs
after launch. CEMA expects 1.4 million DVD players
to be sold next year, according to Lisa Fasold, a
spokeswoman for the organization.
The growth of DVD is being felt in the video-rental
market. On Friday, West Coast Entertainment said it
will offer DVD throughout its chain of 503 stores.
"Our test stores have shown increased revenues from
DVD rental and sales," said Kyle Standley, president
and CEO of West Coast Video. "We feel this may be a
breakout year for DVD."
West Coast Video also announced it has teamed with
Warner Home Video and struggling
consumer-electronics chain Nobody Beats the Wiz to
cross-promote DVD hardware with free rentals during
the holiday season.
Still unavailable are sales figures for Divx, the
pay-per-view format of DVD created by retailer Circuit
City. October was the first full month of Divx sales.
With Divx players from Panasonic and ProScan due in
stores in another week, Divx has started a special
program where customers who buy a player get five
free movies. The program runs through January,
according to Josh Dare, a spokesman for Divx.
DVD Express, an online DVD retailer, is doing Divx
one better. For the entire month of November it's giving
away one player every day to contestants. No purchase
is necessary, just register at the DVD Express website
for a chance to win a free Toshiba 2108 player.
DVD fans are already proving they'll go to any length to
get their favorite films in the format. When Twentieth
Century Fox registered domains for DVD movies using
the specific naming scheme (www.speeddvd.com for
Speed, www.predatordvd.com for Predator, etc.),
Steve Tannehill registered www.starwarsdvd.com in his
name.
Tannehill, Webmaster of the DVD Resource Page, said
he hopes that by having control of the domain name,
he'll know when Fox plans to release the Star Wars
movies on DVD.
"Do you think for a minute that I am not going to roll
over when Fox asks for them back?" Tannehill wrote
on his site. "I am doing it to make a point: that we want
Star Wars on DVD, and we want to know when it is
going to be released."
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techweb.com
New Chips Could Help DVD Notebook Sales
(11/06/98 5:06 p.m. ET)
By John Gartner, TechWeb
ATI Technologies announced two graphics chips this
week that could heat up tepid demand for DVD
notebooks.
The integrated chips, which combine memory,
hardware-assisted MPEG-2 playback, and 2-D/3-D
video functions, could spur the confusing DVD laptop
market.
The ATI Rage Mobility-M and Rage Mobility-P
integrate functions that previously required six chips.
The chips include 4 megabytes of DRAM and add
some MPEG-2 playback acceleration in hardware. The
chips are scheduled to ship to notebook manufacturers
in January 1999, and notebooks containing the chips
are expected to be available in the first quarter of next
year.
All of the major notebook manufacturers, including
Compaq, Dell, Gateway, IBM, and Toshiba, have
added DVD models to their high-end notebook lines,
but analysts said supply has outpaced demand.
"Today, there hasn't been a whole lot of call for DVD
playback [on notebooks]; its been more of a push than
a pull," said Mike Feibus, a principal analyst at Mercury
Research. The lack of business applications and games
are partly to blame, he added.
Also, DVD drives add substantially more to the cost of
the system than CD-ROM drives do, and that is
expected to continue for some time. "It will be years
before we see price parity with CD-ROMs", said
Feibus.
DVD drives cost three times more than CD-ROM
drives, without many tangible benefits, according to
Greg Munster, director of worldwide product
marketing at Hewlett-Packard.
Also, DVD content is just being launched in the market,
so its primary use, so far, is for watching movies on
airplanes. "I don't know a lot of our customers who are
creating content on DVD," said Munster.
"Executives and top salespeople who can demand just
about anything from their companies get DVD to use
for entertainment. And if it gets them to take their
notebooks with them and use it for e-mail, then maybe
that's not such a bad thing," said Rob Enderle, an
analyst and Giga Information Group.
Enderle said the lack of support for DVD-RAM media
is holding back sales of DVD notebooks. The lack of
support forces users to buy expensive DVD-ROM
authoring equipment, rather than $500 DVD-RAM
drives because portable compatible players don't exist
yet.
"Demand for DVD notebooks will increase after the
fourth-generation drives [supporting DVD-RAM] ship
next year," said Enderle. Also next year, notebooks will
begin featuring 4X speed DVD drives, and the price
differential is expected to drop to twice the cost of a
CD-ROM by the end of next year.
ATI's new chips compete with NeoMagic's
MagicMedia256AV because they both provide
"hardware assisted" DVD, a middle-ground DVD
playback capability. The DVD notebook market also
includes software-only and full-hardware DVD options.
HP's Munster said software-only DVD requires a
considerable percentage of the CPU and does not
guarantee uninterrupted broadcast-quality playback.
Full-hardware DVD requires only a fraction of the
CPU, letting users watch a video and do other work
simultaneously.
Larry Chisvin, director of marketing for multimedia at
Neomagic, said MagicMedia256AV's
hardware-assisted DVD provides most of the benefit of
full-hardware DVD by focusing on sound quality and
accelerating motion compensation without the added
cost.
For most users, full-hardware DVD is overkill, Chisvin
added. "The trend is to let the increasingly more
powerful processors do more. Eventually there won't
be a need to have external MPEG-2 hardware," he
said. |
