Move Over, DVD-RAM Here Comes DVD-RW - Pioneer North America Inc plans initial DVD-RW product - Company Business and Marketing

Computer Technology Review, Dec, 2000 by Hal Glatzer

After having the rewritable DVD market to themselves for nearly three years, the manufacturers of DVD-RAM are going to have competition from Pioneer--the company that created the market for recordable DVD in the first place.

The new rewritable format is dubbed DVD-RW. "Conceptually, the technology is similar to phase-change CD-RW," said Bob Niimi, vice president of group business development at Pioneer North America Inc. The initial product will be a home-video recorder, with MPEG-2 compression built in. Announced in the U.S. at Comdex, and exhibited first at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show, it should be released around the second quarter of 2001, with a list price around $2,500.

That's pretty high, considering that the most expensive VCRs cost less than $1,000 today, and some low-end recorders retail for under $200. But what will probably appeal most to potential customers is that MPEG-2 compression enables each 4.7GB disk to hold up to two hours of video programming--not only what's dubbed "off-air" but home-video and digital still pictures too. And like Pioneer's original write-once DVD-R format, disks recorded in the DVD-RW format are specified to be readable in most of today's DVD-Video players and DVD-ROM drives.

"What we're aiming for is maximum compatibility," explained Andy Parsons, senior vice president for product development. "We probably can't get compatibility with all existing players and drives." Nonetheless, any compatibility with today's installed base is something that DVD-RAM simply can not match.

The problem for Pioneer--if indeed it turns out to be a problem--can be traced to the fact that some DVD-ROMs and DVD-Video disks are manufactured with two data layers. Some drives automatically "look" for that second layer, and may reject a disk if it's not there. Also, DVD-RW disks will carry a new and unique media identification code that may not be recognized by older drives. Both of these issues can be resolved with "minor firmware modifications," Parsons said.

New firmware would also enable read-only DVD drives to accept DVD-RAM disks. And the DVD-RAM manufacturers (Hitachi, Toshiba, and Panasonic) are lobbying the DVD Forum for a spec called "DVD-Multi" that would codify what future firmware would need to read DVD-RAM disks. But there's no question that, compared to DVD-RAM media, DVD-RW media will more nearly resemble the replicated disks that today's DVD-ROM and DVD-Video drives "expect" to read.

Pioneer is lobbying the DVD Forum too, for a spec that would cover both DVD-RW's (current) video and (future) data applications. And by September it had signed up 33 drive and/or media companies for a new industry group called the RW Products Promotion Initiative (RWPPI).

Write-Once Too

The new DVD-RW drive will also record Pioneer's 4.7GB write-once DVD-R disks. (There's no write-once version of DVD-RAM.) But Pioneer will bifurcate the market by formulating two different media types. The current version--the second-generation successor to Pioneer's original 3.95GB media--will be renamed "DVD-R for Authoring." It's optimized to respond to the 635nm laser in Pioneer's current generation of DVD-R drives, and is targeted to professional or "industrial" video producers and content publishers, for whom the disks may serve as masters for replication.

The new alternative media, to be called "DVD-R for General Use," will respond only to the new drive's 650nm laser wavelength. While professionals may use them too, they will be targeted to the consumer market. They will also have a built-in copy-protection scheme that will prevent them from accepting files generated from suitably copy-protected DVD-ROMs and DVD-Videos.

Moreover, Pioneer will manufacture separate and mutually incompatible drives for DVD for Authoring and DVD for General Use disks. In short: while either disk can be read by a DVD-ROM drive or a DVD-Video player, it cannot be recorded except in the specific type of drive (-Authoring or -General Use) for which it was manufactured.

A DVD-RW drive for PCs was still only a prototype when Niimi and Parsons spoke with me in September. So it is a write-once DVD-R drive with a 650nm laser diode that, at least initially, will cross over into the data storage market. Pricing and availability could be announced as early as Comdex.

The shift from a 635nm to a 650nm wavelength also gives Pioneer an opportunity to fix what seems to be the only serious flaw in its existing DVD-R drives. Reportedly, excessive heat from the 635nm laser diode has adversely affected some drives' performance over time; so far, Pioneer has offered DVD-R only as an external drive with a fan. "The 650s have a better heat characteristic [i.e., they run cooler]," Parsons told me, "so a DVD-R drive for general use can be made in an internal version."

DVD-RW disks will ship as bare media. Without cartridges or jackets around them, they can be used not only in tray-loaded drives but in drives fed by slots. And the phase-change recording layer is specified to sustain--for up to 1,000 rewrite cycles--the same ratio of amorphous-to-crystalline reflectivity (i.e., 18- to 30 percent) as that of replicated DVD-ROMs.