If you BUILD it, they will FILL it - Company Business and Marketing

Emedia Professional, Feb, 2000 by Debbie Galante Block

Replicating DVD-18

After months of debilitating debate among replicators about whether anybody will ever want, use, or really need to take DVD to its 18GB double-layered, double-sided extreme, two new titles rendered the questions moot.

Trust the ride, not the tellers: after months of debilitating debate among replicators about whether will anybody ever want, use, or really need to take DVD to its 18GB double-layered, double-sided extreme, two new rides rendered the questions moot. Artisan Home Entertainment declared its pro-DVD-18 stance in October when it debuted The Stand, and DVD International quickly followed with Aquaria, which hit the streets in ail its four-flight glory in early November. These rides instantly demonstrate DVD-18's promised versatility, since they couldn't be more different: The Stand is the DVD codification of a TV miniseries while Aquaria falls squarely in the video wallpaper category, consisting of screen footage of beautiful aquariums. What the two titles have in common is that their wealth of high bit-rate content required the space that only DVD-18 can provide.

Why all of a sudden the demand for DVD-18? According to findings propagated by Warner Advanced Media Operations (WAMO), replicators of the first DVD-18 discs and, not surprisingly, the format's most invested supporters, more and more rides are confronting the capacity limits of DVD-9. Since DVD's mantle has always been raising the bar for video and audio quality, and the higher bit rates that deliver higher quality take more space, it doesn't take much of a stretch to see rides that push the envelope aesthetically increasing their appetite for storage space.

WAMO estimates a desirable DVD movie title's bit budget for "bonus materials" like motion menus, trailers, interviews, additional scenes, Web applications, and the like at 3.5GB. Assuming that's only slightly overestimating the generosity of today's video titles (some might say it's wildly overestimating it), when you add that to 120 minutes (standard full-feature length) of video and audio encoded at a median 5.5mbps, according to WAMO, you're already maxing out 9.4GB DVD. Try encoding epics like The Great Escape or recent monstrosities like Waterworld with the same parameters and you'll kiss DVD-9 goodbye in the second act. Or try encoding a shorter film--say 100-120 minutes--at DVD's maximum 9mbps bit rate, and DVD-9 will again prove insufficient. This is the heart of WAMO's argument for DVD-18, and each point is a topic of some debate. The question remains, though: how desirable is that added video quality, and how many titles will really call for it, now that the first four-tier titles have shown the way?

DVD-9'S STP TREATMENT

The surface transfer step (STP) that distinguishes the two shipping DVD-18s from DVD-9s is a replication-process innovation of Warner's own design. Thus it remains the only demonstrated method for DVD-18 replication. So why hasn't anyone else replicated DVD-18s to date? Whether the issue is market demand or the complexity of the process is hotly debated among WAMO's competitors.

WAMO vice president for DVD operations Bill Mueller says he is confused about the controversy. "Originally, DVD was presented as a suite of products: DVD 5, 9, 10, and 18. We are just fulfilling that promise by providing DVD-18. This now gives customers the complete range of capacity options," Mueller says. Aside from WAMO's STP, for which it has a patent pending, there are other ways to manufacture DVD- 18, he says, "but we use the STP technique because of its similarity to standard DVD-9 manufacturing."

Authoring for a DVD-18 is also much the same as authoring two DVD-9s, with no special requirements. Cost is a vague issue. Several factors determine the price: how much detail is put on the disc, how long it takes to design a menu and navigation, and replication. Mueller says, "Cost is very dependent on yield. Since creating DVD-18 is essentially a DVD-9 process plus an STP step, the yields should be very close to whatever your current DVD-9 yields are."

Replicators need not be scared away by the complexity of the STP process, according to Bob Headrick, executive vice president, optical media sales and marketing at Technicolor (formerly Nimbus CD International). It will be a normal learning curve, he argues. "DVD-18 is hard to produce, but so was DVD-5 at first. It takes time to iron all of the bugs out," he says.

ABOUT THE PROCESS

In essence, DVD-18 is nothing more than two DVD-9s bonded together.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Replicating DVD-9s is de rigueur at this point--not to diminish the achievement, but given the discs' prevalence in the burgeoning DVD movie market, most replicators have experience with DVD-9. Thus, describing the STP process that makes DVD-18 possible (under the current Warner rubric), WAMO's Mueller emphasizes that DVD-18 discs "affirm current DVD specifications." In other words, it's nothing new. It just builds on what's already known.

The main challenge WAMO faced was transferring the layer 1 information layer to the layer 0 disc. The solution was to create an interim 0.6mm DVD-9 disc, not made of the usual polycarbonate (PC), but of polymethyl methacrylate, better known as acrylic. (Acrylic is what laserdiscs are made of.) The process is as follows: the PMMA layer 1 information surface is molded similarly to the way a PC layer 1 information layer is molded. The PMMA layer is essentially a temporary information carrier which is stripped away after transferring the information surface. Pits are still being molded and sputtered just as with DVD-9. During the STP process, the information surface is then transferred to a standard layer 0 disc with a "special" adhesive. The PMMA disc is separated from layer 1, leaving only the information transferred to the adhesive. What is created, then, is a half-thickness 0.6mm DVD-9.