DVD Technology and Macs
posted December 15, 1998
First of all, let me verify that E4 is out of business. There is a good chance that the technology will be bought up by one of several companies who are interested
in the company. Customers, therefore, won't necessarily get stuck with a dead-end product. It all depends upon who buys E4, and when the deal is closed.
No, I do not have any specifics as to who is looking into buying E4.
Secondly, I must take a position of strong opposition with the statement that "E4 was not very well run." As an involved but more neutral participant, I really
find no basis in fact for the opinion that E4 was "not well run".
E4 was extremely well run.
They had a talented events marketing staff and their engineering manager came out of the QuickTime group.
When I originally saw E4's product demonstrations, they were behind where Apple Computer was, and were not even running on a Macintosh yet. By late
Spring of 1997, they were functioning on a Macintosh and well ahead of where Apple's engineering teams were, technically and otherwise.
In my seven years at Apple Computer and my two years in Apple Evangelism, I never saw a single product progress so well, so quickly.
E4 managed to create what I personally feel was the best Macintosh DVD product we will see for the next 12-24 months. Their engineering team beat Apple
Computer's DVD teams to market, and managed to ship two upgrade products and an MPEG-2 streaming product and rev the DVD upgrade kit software six
times before Apple even got its first DVD and MPEG-2 products out the door.
No poorly run company could have accomplished this.
E4 basically just had the bad luck to run into a series of unavoidable obstacles and logistical problems which killed the company:
The Asian Economy Downturn:
E4 was hurt by this to a good extent, but it was certainly not the single fatal blow to the company.
Their funding from Dooin, Inc. of Korea was actually withdrawn and the company spun off during 1997, when the Asian economy began its downturn. For the
last 12-18 months, E4 was basically acting like any other startup, and living off its initial spin-off funding.
This is extremely common in the Silicon Valley, and E4 was no exception.
If Dooin, Inc. had kept their money into E4 for another twelve months, I have no doubt they would have turned around.
Logistical Industry Issues:
The biggest killer of E4 was the bad luck of an industry wide DVD drive component shortage.
Very few industry analysts and writers really seem to intimately understand exactly what it takes to design, create, test and ship a computer product. You really
need to live this nightmare to really appreciate it properly. The logistics of component supplies alone are staggering:
A shipment of drives coming in from Japan will take an average of two months to clear US Customs. Assembly line tooling needs to be torn out, repurposed,
reorganized and all personnel retrained in new procedures before a manufacturing line is ready to produce computers. You need to have constantly and reliably
replenished supplies of drives, components, raw materials, CRTs, little plastic keyboard caps, antistatic bags, boxes and packing foam. It really is amazingly
complicated.
Last February, when I chaired a segment of a meeting of the Software Publishers' Association DVD SIG, some of the speakers were still spouting the older
industry party line that DVD would be deployed on every consumer PC coming off the factory line by the end of 1998.
Even back then, I said that this was an unreasonably and impossibly optimistic estimate. Marketing figures coming out of the DVD drive industry at that time
estimated the number of DVD-ROM drives producible in 1998 to be
around 13 million drives, with some 3 million reserved for consumer DVD players. Marketing "estimated run-rate" figures are generally too optimistic.
Even if those figures are in fact met or exceeded, they are not in synch with the volume of PCs and Macs built in a year.
Some 50-75 million PCs of all types are produced worldwide each year. Apple alone makes 3-6 million Power Macintosh and PowerBook systems each year.
This means that a combined average of 250,000 to 500,000 Power Macs and PowerBooks of all types, roll off the assembly line each month, or 11,363 to
22,727 every workday (assuming a 22-work day month).
Every component - power supplies, RAM, hard drives, batteries, DVD-ROM drives, even surface mount devices - must be available and deliverable on
schedule in quantities of 250,000 to several million per month in order for production to keep moving.
Logistics are about the same size for Dell, Compaq, IBM and anyone else who makes large numbers of computer systems in the industry. Apple has makes and
sells as any computers as any individual PC company does.
The fact remains, however, that component suppliers often de-commit from delivering all of the components that they agreed to supply to a computer
manufacturer - so a signed contract to supply 500,000 components a month doesn't mean that a company like Apple will really get these components at those
levels.
When a company doesn't get a critical component in the needed quantities, it often eats the cost big time. There was an instance long ago when stacks of
completed, high-end PowerBooks sat in the warehouses because a modem manufacturer was unable to meet production quotas, due to an industry wide
shortage of critical components that the modem company required. When the modems finally arrived, Apple had to eat the additional cost of opening up each of
those PowerBooks, installing the modem, retesting the modem and system, and repacking the PowerBook into the box.
Again, nobody was really at fault here. This was a costly example of how an industry shortage can hurt a company's bottom line.
Yes, the reverse also happens in the computer industry. Computer companies often de-commit from buying components.
With respect to E4, the component shortage prevented them from shipping their upgrade product, and the downturn in the Asian economy slowed the ability of
the DVD drive manufacturers to ramp up production and alleviate the shortages.
No drives, no upgrade products. No upgrade products, not enough revenue for E4.
Changes in Apple Directions Necessitated by a Need for a Turnaround:
We cannot forget here that 1997 was not a stellar year for Apple until after Steve took over the helm. The end of 1997 was Apple's first profitable quarter since
Spindler's days -- and Steve Jobs' first 90 days.
In order to turn the company around, Steve had to cut.
The original Amelio-era plan was to initially bundle a solution for the desktop, using an Apple Developer's solution (ergo, either E4 or Wired Inc.). Apple
would follow with its own products later.
Both the E4 and the Wired Inc solutions were investigated. Our respective engineering teams worked very closely with each other and with Evangelism (me).
My own personal view was that the E4 solution had a much better approach, and it had the advantage of being based upon the C-Cubed Microsystems ZiVA
chipset, like the Apple solutions.
Steve Jobs and the executive staff most certainly knew what the issues were. Steve is a truly remarkable, knowledgeable and insightful leader, and I miss
working with him.
Despite the importance of DVD, Steve had to kill off all planned DVD bundles or BTO which Apple had planned with E4 and software title developers in 1997.
There wouldn't have been an Apple Computer around in 1998 if he had not made some very tough decisions.
While bundling or BTO could have been restored later in 1998, the company was still shaky, and "Not Invented Here" (NIH) has always been a bundle-killing
attitude that periodically resurfaces around Apple. The engineering groups at Apple often prefer to do things themselves, and in the instance of DVD Apple
engineering work was still going to be absolutely necessary sooner or later in order to integrate DVD with QuickTime.
Bundling or BTO-ing the E4 solution would have bought E4 at least 6-9 months more time. In my opinion, it probably would have saved the E4. It probably
would have allowed Apple to deliver a DVD solution for the desktop faster, and off-loaded the tech support and updates to E4.
Again, though, the timing was simply wrong.
There was no getting around an industry-wide DVD shortage, even for Apple.
Bundling any solution with a G3 was useless if neither Apple nor E4 could get the DVD-ROM drives in proper quantities to maintain production levels for both
desktop and PowerBooks.
DVD Drives for the PowerBook are also not the same as desktop DVD drives. PowerBook drives have to be able to support sleep, spin-down and power
management modes on the PowerBook. They have to be lower profile to fit into an expansion bay, and they have to draw a minimum amount of electrical power
or the drive will simply drain down a PowerBook battery to flat zero in a short time.
When Apple killed off its own HW & SW developer title bundles, DVD was doomed to be a product without any immediately significant titles. This probably
won't change until developers see a larger install base for DVD on the Macintosh. With the death of E4, and the sale of E4 up in the air, this install base will be
probably be delayed.
Steve understood all of this. Right decision for Apple, tough and unavoidable consequences. That's what CEOs get paid for. Bad luck. Bad timing. No choice.
Nobody's fault. Steve's decision was correct.
Technological Issues with the State of the Art in DVD Mastering:
It is absolutely NOT reasonable at the present point in time to expect anyone's DVD player solution to be bulletproof, and play all DVD Video titles.
Part of dealing with the computer DVD technology is realizing the fact that almost every aspect of DVD creation and playback has bugs. This technology is not
easy to deploy, and it comes at a time when both Microsoft and Apple Computer are making substantial changes to their operating systems. It also comes at a
time when Intel, Motorola, IBM and Apple are also making massive changes to memory and caching architectures, and a lot more. Additionally, it is coming at a
time when laser technologies are evolving.
A former colleague of mine at Apple put it succinctly when he said:
"Hey, this shit ain't easy... "
It will all get debugged and stabilize out later. For right now, the industry is still into a learning curve on the technology. The fortunate thing is that almost all of
this stuff can be cured in software.
DVD Mastering and replication is basically not too far away from where CD-ROM mastering was, 10 years ago. More than one DVD Video title released during
1997-98 ran into compatibility problems even with commercial consumer DVD players. With this kind of buggy state of the art in even the consumer electronics
world, it is unreasonable to expect a computer solution to be bulletproof.
No matter what DVD player system you are using on a Mac or on a PC, users are constantly running into DVD discs that don't work properly. Users are often
quick to point out that the malfunctioning title may work on a consumer DVD player, or on a particular Windows based DVD system.
The "logical" assumption is that the Apple based DVD solution has bugs: either in the player application, UDF support, drivers for the DVD drives, or
"something" done by the developer or Apple.
The problem is that this type of basic troubleshooting is often almost totally irrelevant when it comes to computer DVD technologies.
The reality is that most of these problems occur because the state of the art for DVD authoring, mastering, premastering and replication technologies and tools -
although rapidly evolving - is still significantly buggy.
Whether or not a DVD Video works or plays on another platform does not mean that it was mastered correctly.
DVDs need to be made with precision down to sub-microns and hundreds of angstroms. To give you an idea of how small an angstrom is, a typical small
human virus (influenza, polio, etc) is about 100 angstroms in diameter.
ROM family formatting tools used for DVD mastering and by DVD replicators are basically buggy - but getting better, quickly. The predominant laser beam
recording software in use by many replication facilities is an item of DOS shareware, and has substantial bugs.
On the replication factory lines themselves, typical DVD yields are still often only around 3. 97 of the discs in a run are useless. A good production facility in
full publication of a debugged title often still only sees about a 33 yield. Pretty ugly, but this was a pattern seen over 10 years ago in the earliest days of
CD-ROM replication.
As a result, DVD-video and DVD-ROM discs may in fact not work on certain platforms and players. This is not the fault of Apple, Apple title developers or evil
spirits.
As a result, companies who build DVD-Video player solutions for the PC and the Macintosh have basically been running around writing workarounds and
software patches to compensate for some of the bugs in DVD mastering and premastering tools. They patch drivers, UDF support and player apps to make
certain titles work properly. The "real" solution is to fix the bug in the mastering tool, but computer customers need workarounds on a faster basis.
Will DVD follow CD-ROM and also take another 10 years before all the bugs are worked out? I seriously doubt it. Most of the big problems will probably be
long gone by the end of 1999. The industry has grown up a lot since then, there are fewer standards wars, and optical storage technology is not a new concept.
DVD is getting better, very fast - but it is still not quite there yet in many ways.
A lack of understanding of these facts is partially what led to the final nail in E4's coffin:
A Lukewarm Product review by MacWorld.
Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy reading Cameron Crotty's articles.
My own personal opinion, however, is that Cameron Crotty, while having a good working knowledge of DVD, does not have sufficient depth of experience
with the technology on a professional level to validate some of the recommendations and opinions voiced in Cameron's articles.
The problem with Cameron's DVD articles is that Cameron Crotty knew just enough to be dangerous. I spoke with and corresponded with the editors at
MacWorld on these issues when the article came out. Even the MacWorld editors agreed with me that the article was technically flawed. They would not,
however, do any retraction.
Cameron's recommendation of "wait for other products" was normally safe.
The issue for the Mac Developer is that DVD means bigtime cash and engineering outlays upfront. Doing a certified & legal DVD Video player is damned
expensive and time consuming. Dolby AC-3 certification takes as long as 9 months, and you have to obtain certification for your Content Scrambling System
(CSS), Video Out (MacroVision), as well as the normal FCC certifications.
Nobody in the industry has 100 bulletproof performance right now. There are too many bugs in the mastering tools.
Waiting for "solid performance" doesn't do any good if a wait and see attitude kills off the sales of only DVD upgrade kit developers you've got.
E4 needed cash sales. The September 1998 MacWorld Article drove the last nail into the coffin.
With the end of E4, in my opinion, the Mac OS customer has been done a disservice. Choice is always good. Choice is reduced. The only Mac OS Desktop
Upgrade kit product which was fully certified out is gone.
The Wired Inc Mason X and DVD-2-Go solutions are still out there. Hopefully, they will revise the feature set in their solutions, soon.
Final Opinions:
There's more to the story than this, but the important facts are at least here.
Someone legitimate in the Macintosh community needs to buy out E4's technology and take over the product line.
With the potential of Software DVD, I do not know if this will realistically happen in time.
Until this happens, DVD development on the Mac OS is likely to only move slowly as Apple Developers will simply wait until full QuickTime integration with
DVD, Dolby AC-3 and MPEG-2 catches up. Hopefully, this will occur very soon.
I am aware of what is happening with QuickTime, and even the existing Apple DVD player software was architected with the ability to eventually be fully and
seamlessly integrated with QuickTime, and to hardware abstract.
There really is a lot of hope here.
A product is only as good as the technology and circumstances allow.
DVD is still an emerging and maturing technology, and it is unrealistic to expect DVD products to be bulletproof.
E4's failure was not a failure of their vision, people, products or management.
All in all, however, I feel that E4 did a really good job. They produced the first turnkey DVD upgrade kit, made a SCSI version, an SDK, made the CoolStream
MPEG-2 streaming product, and they did it very well.
Yes, their kit had some issues, but nothing is bulletproof right now, and in my view, CoolDVD had fewer problems than any of the other Mac OS solutions and
E4 was exceptionally good on fixing problems with regular software revs of its product.
Gil Spencer of E4 deserves a standing ovation for his elegant and comprehensive engineering. John Chan, Mike Schmitt, Erin Pierce and the rest of the sales
and marketing staff at E4 deserved one, too.
In my book, they did nothing wrong. They produced an outstanding product. Their dream and vision was 100 correct. They proved that they cared about
quality.
I am proud to have worked with them, and proud of what they brought to the industry.
In the end, only factors way outside of anyone's control and anyone's ability to foresee caused the death of E4. These people did all that they could to overcome
almost insurmountable problems -- and they still brought their products to market.
The company may be gone, but Apple still needs developers like this "can-do" type of spirit. The companies who hire people from E4 will no doubt be very
fortunate. These are the type of employees who build great new dreams, and great new products. They keep the computer industry moving.
David Masamitsu, MS.
former Apple Computer Technology Evangelist for Desktop Systems Hardware Apple Computer Tour of Duty: 1991-1998
machwevangelist@yahoo.com |
