let's get REAL - Industry Trend or Event

Emedia Professional, Nov, 1999 by Dana J. Parker

there are times when I'm just as terminally bored with the ongoing rewritable DVD squabbles as you must be by now, but it's hard to resist the topic in the face of a flurry of breaking news that practically cries out for analysis.

For starters, there was the announcement, at the DVD Forum's end-of-August summit in Palm Springs (affectionately dubbed "Sweatin' with the Forum" by some attendees), of the forthcoming publication of the DVD-RTR (Real Time Recordable) formats. These two additions to the DVD Forum's library of DVD books--one for video recording and one for digital streaming--are designed to allow real-time recording of analog-broadcast and digital-broadcast sources, respectively. These logical, or application-level, formats bring DVD-RAM and DVD-RW, the two "official" DVD Forum rewritable formats, one step closer to becoming the basis for a consumer DVD recorder.

Meanwhile, half a world away in Berlin at the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) 1999, Europe's largest consumer electronics show, Pioneer and Sharp announced plans to release DVD video recorders based on 4.7GB DVD-RW in Japan by the end of this year--assuming the DVD-RTR book reaches final-spec status by then. While the DVD-RW media is likely to be compatible with most, if not all, existing players, using the DVD Forum-developed RTR logical format will mean that the recorded discs will not play back in existing players--only in DVD PCs with the appropriate application software.

Not to be outdone, Philips simultaneously demonstrated its own DVD video recorder based on 4.7GB DVD RW, which would use a subset of the DVD-Video specification and its "lossless linking" to produce discs that can be read back in any existing DVD player. Products based on this technology were announced for release "after mid-2000."

This is all very exciting stuff, but it only makes me wonder, once again, what exactly it is about rewritable DVD that's got manufacturers so excited. It's not as if there's any historical precedent that points to an enormous consumer demand for high-density rewritable optical media, after all.

let's get specious

Pundits and market researchers like to use CD-RW's current and projected future growth as evidence for the presumed demand for rewritable DVD. They cite the fact that sales of CD-R-only drives are dwindling, while socalled CD-RW drive sales are at least doubling every year, and are expected to continue to do so for at least two more years. This is extrapolated into two assumptions: one, that CD-RW will someday replace the floppy disk; and two, that rewritable DVD will eventually replace CD-RW. In a related extrapolation, it's assumed that since DVD-Video players partially replace the VCR for home video viewing, that a rewritable version of DVD is naturally what will entirely replace the VCR.

It's easy to see the appeal of these scenarios; if they were valid, it would indicate a huge potential market for rewritable DVD as a replacement for two nearly-ubiquitous computer formats, and one nearly-universal consumer electronics device.

Sorry, I just don't buy it. What's not obvious in this assumption--that the success of one rewritable format equals future success for higher-density rewritable formats--is that CD-RW's success is not, in fact, its own. That, and the related fact that the "replacement" of a technology--in this case, CD-R by CD-RW, and CD-RW by rewritable DVD (of any flavor)--is not a replacement at all, but an assimilation. After all, people aren't buying CD-RW drives in order to record CD-RW discs--they're buying them to record CD-R. This is evidenced by the ratio of CD-R media sold to CD-RW media sold, which some estimates place at 66 to one. Either all those CD-RW owners are rewriting their one piece of media repeatedly, or they're not writing it at all. CD-R is the workhorse and the accepted, useful, mainstreamed format that so-called CD-RW drives make possible. The designation CD-RW gets the credit, but that capability just comes along for the ride. Sure, CD-RW is doing quite well, and there's no reason not to have it as long as it's available. But CD-R is the star.

real-time writables ... right

Taking the logical next step, why should we assume that realtime recording, or even two-way compatibility, is what will make a killer consumer format out of rewritable DVD? It never worked that way for CD-R or for CD-RT. Even today, recording directly to either type of media is problematic. It's a far more common practice to use magnetic hard drives as staging areas. This enables the content to be manipulated and formatted for optimal performance before recording begins.

I'll tell you what I could really get excited about. How about a video recording device based on magnetic hard drives, like TiVo or Replay TV, with the addition of a bare-bones DVD authoring system and a combination CD-R/RW and DVD-R/ RW drive? You could record, review, and either erase or permanently archive broadcast analog or digital video, not to mention your own home movies. Staging recorded content on the hard drive would allow things that the real-time recordable formats preclude--removal of commercials, insertion of chapter breaks and index points, and even menus.