Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Energy Conversion Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ray who wrote (3337)	3/16/1999 9:51:00 PM
From: Don Devlin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8393

Hitachi sees digital future in the home DVD Recorder Set To Replay VCR Success Story Hitachi Ltd. is betting the future lies with the digital versatile disc (DVD) recorder, which it sees as the biggest potential moneymaker since the videocassette recorder. Riding the digital wave, it aims to turn its audiovisual-equipment division into a profit-making operation, focusing on the development of products for moving pictures, an area in which it enjoys a technological advantage. By coming up with exciting innovative products, Hitachi also hopes to dispel a widespread view that it is lacking in consumer appeal and slow in introducing new products. Digital televisions were Hitachi's main exhibit at the international consumer electronics show held in the U.S. city of Las Vegas in early January. However, in a private room open only by invitation, the company had a DVD recorder on display. With a 4.7-gigabyte DVD-RAM, the device is reportedly capable of recording high-quality images and features an advanced search function. Hitachi aims to commercialize the product by 2000, company officials said. Hitachi's strategy for digital consumer electronics has primarily been focused on the development of products using moving-picture technologies. The company has taken this approach in the belief that moving pictures can convey the richest and most complex information content of all communications formats. Among Hitachi's digital electronics products using motion-picture technologies are an MPEG camera and a digital TV already on sale in the U.S. and the U.K. MPEG is a widely used digital compression standard developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group. An optical-disc camera, another product in the pipeline, will be able to capture images that can be played back on a DVD recorder. The company has applied technology used in the MPEG camera to the development of the optical-disc camera. But unlike the camera, sold primarily to professional users, the optical-disc camera will be targeted at individual consumers, the officials said. The company is also focusing efforts on equipment for digital networks. Hi-tachi has been supplying digital-network technologies since 1995, when the company introduced an integrated receiver/decoder for DirecTV, a U.S.-based satellite broadcaster, in cooperation with Thomson Consumer Electronics Inc., a French company that is the largest TV maker in the U.S. In 1997, the company developed the world's first chip for an all-format decoder for 18 terrestrial digital broadcasting modes that recently started operating in the U.S. Hitachi expects that, in an age of digital consumer electronics, viewers will record moving pictures received via digital networks on a DVD player or a D-VHS player. The company plans to develop display, storage and networking equipment in anticipation of the arrival of the digital era, the officials said. The key issue for Hitachi is marketing, however, since the company is seen as lagging such industry leaders as Sony Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and Pioneer Electronic Corp. Analysts doubt whether the company's slogan, " Here, The Future," introduced three years ago for its audiovisual products, helps to enhance consumer recognition of Hitachi as a leading maker of such products. As part of a larger reorganization drive, Hitachi in April will adopt a company system under which digital home electronics will be controlled by the digital media group. The company hopes the new organizational structure will help speed up decision-making and product development and create an environment conducive to originality. <<Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Inc. -- 03-15-99>> [Copyright 1999, Nikkei America]