the Write RAMifications - Technology Information

Emedia Professional, April, 2000 by Philip De Lancie

DVD Authoring & DVD-RAM

Family unity has faced the greatest stress in the field of rewritable DVD, with at least three distinct approaches: DVD-RW, DVD RW, and DVD-RAM.

When DVD first emerged, it was its versatility--physical and logical--that allowed disparate interests to come together behind a unified family of formats. But that same versatility has since encouraged the development of multiple variations on the DVD theme, often with less-than-perfect compatibility. Family unity has faced the greatest stress in the field of rewritable DVD, with at least three distinct approaches: DVD-RW, DVD RW, and DVD-RAM.

From the authoring standpoint, rewritable DVD formats are potentially very attractive for media-asset storage, prototyping, and short-run publishing. To meet these needs, the format should ideally be cheap, dependable, read-compatible, and removable. And it should offer advantages over DVD-R (recordable, but not rewritable), which currently offers broad compatibility (playable on DVD-ROM and most DVD-Video players), but is hampered by the high cost of media and drives.

So how do the rewritable contenders measure up to these authoring criteria? DVD RW (never officially accepted by the DVD Forum) is out of the running for now, since it hasn't shipped and won't for quite some time. DVD-RW (Book F of the DVD specification) has also yet to ship, and judging from the January Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, it is being repositioned by backer Pioneer as a home video recorder rather than a computer-hosted format appropriate for authoring applications.

That leaves DVD-RAM, the only rewritable DVD format that has actually made it to market. A random-write, phase-change format, DVD-RAM (Book E of the DVD specification) has been available since May 1998 in its Version 1 incarnation, which includes 2.6GB one-sided and 5.2GB two-sided discs. Priced below $700, DVD-RAM offers computer storage/backup at an attractive price-per-megabyte, but its interoperability with DVD-ROM drives and DVD-Video players has been hampered by compatibility issues, including the requirement that two-sided discs be enclosed in a protective cartridge.

Interest in DVD-RAM has lately been heightened by several promising developments, notably the release late last year of a single-sided 4.7GB Version 2, and the announcement that a double-sided 9.4GB version is in the works. Add to that the advent of new DVD-RAM-aware DVD-ROM drives, plus similarly versatile DVD-Video players on the horizon, and suddenly the format's proponents are able to make the case that limitations in both capacity and compatibility have been substantially addressed.

While significant limitations remain, Version 2 increases DVD-RAM's potential utility for both production and delivery applications. With that in mind, it's easy to see why several vendors of DVD-Video authoring packages have recently announced support (in concert with Panasonic, DVD-RAM's biggest backer) for writing to DVD-RAM with their tools.

VERSION 2 EMERGES

DVD-RAM is largely the creature of three major electronics manufacturers: Panasonic (Matsushita), Hitachi, and Toshiba. According to Jeff Saake, General Manager of Panasonic Industrial Company in Milpitas, California, "The production of Version 1 drives this past year by all manufacturers was about 150,000 units worldwide, with Panasonic shipping about 60% of the units."

As of this writing, Version 2 has yet to have any impact in the market. "We are just in the ramp-up mode for Version 2 drives," Saake says. "Panasonic has been shipping only a few hundred since early or mid-December, and all of the initial production capacity is shipping to OEMs, as well as to integrators for their design-in activities. Single- and double-sided media is in production and being shipped to these organizations. Drive units will not appear in the end-user channels until late Q1 of this coming year."

While Version 2 will expand DVD-RAM's capacity, Panasonic and Hitachi are already attacking the issue of interoperability with new DVD-ROM drives that can read DVD-RAM media. In spite of the manufacturing cost of adding DVD-RAM support (which some have placed as high as $30 per drive), OEM and retail pricing for the new drives are roughly the same as the models they replace. (The companies may plan to recoup their costs later by dropping prices more slowly than usual.)

Wolfgang Schlichting, of International Data Corporation of Framingham, Massachusetts, places Panasonic and Hitachi's combined cut of DVD-ROM drives shipped in the first three quarters of 1999--both OEM and retail--at 49% (27 for Panasonic, 22 for Hitachi). So there's little question that the two companies are well positioned to impact the DVD-ROM drive market. But these figures don't yet reflect the installed base of the new RAM-capable drives, because those didn't ship until Q4 1999.

The new DVD-ROM mechanisms handle DVD-RAM discs without cartridges, which limits them to reading single-sided DVD-RAMs. Given the 4.7GB capacity of Version 2 discs, however, the availability of these drives means that DVD-RAM will soon offer an economical alternative DVD-R as a medium for testing DVD-ROM playback of DVD-5 discs before replication.