🚀 go-pugleaf

[I think it's time to abandon CDRwin crack wars, DAE, and Adaptec criticism
for something more serious...  This is, I think, the news of the month!]


OPEN DVD RECORDING IS HERE

Well, at least the blank discs are

by Stewart Wolpin


NEW YORK, October 13, 1998 -- The battle for recordable DVD has been
officially enjoined.


Like the shot fired at Fort Sumter, TDK, joined by Pioneer and Toshiba, last
week seceded from the proposed HP/Sony recordable DVD+RW standard with its
Open DVD compatible rewritable DVD-RW 4.7GB format, good for thousands of
rewrites.


Now before you idly rich uber-geeks rush out to your local Best Buy, The
Good Guys!, Nobody Beats the Wiz, et al, so you can watch "Law & Order"
while digitally recording "South Park" -- rest your sphincters. A recording
DVD replacement for your VCR is WAAAAAY off. There are a couple of technical
hurdles to overcome first, and more potential Hollywood/copyright protection
permutations than anyone wants to shake a stick at.


Here're da facts: The 4.7GB DVD-RW standard proposed by TDK is right now a
data-only format. But unlike the HP/Sony DVD+RW discs, TDK's DVD-RW discs
recorded in a DVD-RW drive will play in your normal, everyday home DVD
player, if the data recorded is readable (i.e. computer-video as opposed to
data). TDK will start production this fall on the new discs, will quantities
available in the spring, primarily for hardware makers to play with as they
develop DVD recorder/players.


The 4.7GB DVD-RW is actually the fourth recordable DVD format introduced in
the last year. The other three:



Pioneer has been selling its $17,000 DVR-S101 DVD-R, a write-once format,
compatible with open DVD, with discs that hold "only" 3.95GB, since July. We
have been told at a $3000 version will be forthcoming from Pioneer sometime
in the Spring 1999.


Toshiba has been selling its SD-W1101 DVD-RAM ($699), a data-only DVD
write-once deck that uses single-sided 2.6GB (approximately $35) and
dual-sided 5.2GB (about $55) blanks, since March.


And then there's the HP/Sony 4.7GB data-only DVD+RW format.

Why so many formats? After all, there's really only one CD recording
technology. But digital audio recording is veritable child's play compared
with the rocket science needed to store digital video signals. All the
current or foreseeable DVD recording decks, regardless of format, are
designed for data recording, not video.


What the Open DVD compatible DVD-R and DVD-RW decks are missing are
real-time MPEG encoders. You have to supplement your once and future open
DVD compatible DVD recording drives with one of these $100,000 puppies
first, and those are the sole province of industrial/commercial DVD burners,
who gain the primary advantage from this new format.


The good news is that $300-400 MPEG encoder chip sets are being developed,
which brings the vision of home DVD recordable into much better focus.


The primary problem with a DVD-RW home deck is Hollywood. You all know how
persnickety the music industry is about copyright's where digital audio
recording is concerned. You have to fork over five times the price for a
blank CD-R for audio use just so poor artists aren't cheated out of their
royalties from digital copies you make, and all digital recordings are
encoded with SCMS so you can't make a digital copy of a digital copy.


If the music industry's relatively harmless paranoia about copyright
protection is Randle P. McMurphy, Hollywood's is Hannibal Lecter. Remember,
these are the folks who actually sued Sony over Beta and home video
recording in the late 1970s. [Hollywood also sued video retailers over the
First Sale Doctrine, which allows stores to buy and rent videos. And a
Hollywood law firm dreamed up Divx. -- Ed.]


Universal and Disney might have sued over home recording rights (and lost),
but all the studios now know what side of the tape the emulsion is on. Home
video is what allows Hollywood to spend $200 million on formulaic, noisy
films with no plot or acting targeted at teenagers. Hollywood also knows you
won't show off your $20,000 Dolby Digital/DTS home theater system with
scenes from "The Sweet Hereafter" DVD.


So it stands to reason the studios certainly don't want you to be able to
make perfect digital recordings of films shown on HBO, Showtime, Turner
Classic Movies, pay per view, et al. If you want to own these films,
Hollywood wants you to pay for them, either in prerecorded versions, or by
forcing unconscionable royalties on DVD-RW blanks.


But this re-recordable 4.7GB open DVD compatible disc is the breakthrough
that will jump-start those negotiations with the Hollywood studios, and
bring recordable DVD to your home that much sooner.


Please feel free to post your comments in Your Two Cents, a folder on our
Message Board.


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This story is an E/Town original.
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