Mobile and recordable variants lead CES product launches
01/18/99
DVD Report
(c) 1999 Phillips Business Information, Inc.
By and large, the new DVD-based products showcased at CES built on existing products, with a twist. The biggest new product category was probably mobile entertainment, with such manufacturers as Panasonic, Pioneer, and JVC parking DVD-equipped sports cars and SUVs in their booths.
Those products were at least on the verge of shipping, which is more than could be said for the plethora of recordable DVD products that cluttered the show floor in prototype versions. The biggest surprise may have been that, video-wise, inexpensive consumer MPEG -2 encoders do seem to be ready for prime time. The image quality of the various cameras being demonstrated didn't compare to major Hollywood releases on DVD, but certainly surpassed videotape.
Despite Tech Demos, No DVD Recorders This Year
Interestingly, manufacturers introduced every DVD Forum-approved flavor of recordable DVD into the consumer space at CES, including Pioneer, who had previously positioned the DVD-RW format primarily as an authoring medium for professional applications. Panasonic and Hitachi both threw their hats into the ring with DVD-RAM demonstrations, while Philips debuted a DVD+RW based system. Company representatives were reluctant to project release dates for the products, and it's unlikely that any of them will see the light of day until 2000, at the earliest.
DVD-Audio was another featured format with an uncertain future. Prototype players dotted the aisles, but manufacturers are still waiting for the final spec to be issued by the DVD Forum. Sony showed a Super Audio CD player (a competing format based on Direct Stream Digital sound technology) that it planned to debut in 1999. Sony's Mike Fidler told DVD Report that, while the company currently has no plans for DVD-Audio hardware, it will "support the DVD Forum" and its official DVD formats, describing SACD as "a different solution."
Many innovations added new features to standard DVD players. Sony and JVC both introduced player models with sophisticated full- color bitmapped menus that pop up on-screen, allowing the video to play in a smaller window as the user makes adjustments or selects different DVD features. Both players will sample the video at chapter stops, building a menu with video clips on the fly. Sony's player also allows "bookmarks" to be created and stored in memory for up to 200 different titles. And Toshiba became the second manufacturer to introduce a multidisc set-top unit, showing a model that can be loaded with two discs at once for uninterrupted play. (Sony released a carousel CD/DVD player last year.)
Great Expectations For Nuon
VM Labs has big ambitions for its Nuon technology in the DVD marketplace. Toshiba has committed to incorporate the high-speed Nuon processor in DVD products coming later this year, although no specific announcements have been made (DVD Report, June 8). Based on Toshiba's commitment, plus interest from other unnamed manufacturers, VM Labs CEO Richard Miller said the company is projecting that in early 2000, Nuon will be included in more than 50% of new DVD players shipped worldwide.
In a reversal from announcements made at the E3 show in Atlanta, VM Labs said that Thomson will not ship Nuon-based DVD players. Because all Thomson-manufactured DVD models in 1999 will be Divx players (although the company will continue to sell open DVD players made by Matsushita), Miller said VM Labs has terminated the relationship between the two companies. "Until Divx proves itself, we're not going to put our engineering efforts into a Divx version of Nuon," he said.
At CES, VM Labs said it had signed several companies to create game controllers for Nuon devices. An Internet peripheral will eventually be available as an aftermarket upgrade that plugs into the joystick port of a Nuon system. And VM Labs has begun speaking with Hollywood about creating Nuon-friendly interactive features for DVD- Video releases. At the system's launch, six titles will be available, with a total of 20-25 slated to ship by the end of the year. "The most important application is games," Miller said, stressing that Nuon will be marketed to casual rather than hardcore gamers, with the intention of expanding the market for home videogames. The roster of software developers on board for the launch includes Activision, Fox Interactive, Hasbro Interactive, and Psygnosis.
Motorola Gives 'Blackbird' A New Name
DVD was a background technology for Motorola, whose previously announced "Blackbird" set-top box design is DVD-compatible (DVD Report, September 21). Motorola announced that the architecture will be known as Streamaster, emphasizing the system's ability to stream video, data, communications, or gaming applications. Incorporating Nuon along with Motorola's PowerPC CPU and communications capabilities, Streamaster will be sold to OEMs as a reference platform, a fully loaded motherboard, or a complete turnkey box.The box will be shipped first to cable systems, with a consumer version slated to debut in 2000. Motorola has projected shipments of one million units in the first year of availability.
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