DVD Takes a Bride - Web links in DVD corporate presentations remain rare

Emedia Professional, August, 1999 by Stephen Ellerin

WebDVD Woos the World (Wide Web)

Earlier this year, AIX Media Group President (and EMedia columnist) Mark Waldrep sang the praises of WebDVD, a then-relatively new DVD application that has virtually eradicated the previously unavoidable time lag of data preserved on optical media by incorporating links to more current Web content. In his bimonthly DVD BETWEEN THE LINES column, Waldrep observed: "It's DVD's ability to play back high-resolution audio and video--coupled with the Internet--that holds the greatest promise. With the successful hybridization of the Internet and disc-resident media assets, the much-maligned "world wide wait" becomes virtually instantaneous" ["WebDVD: DVD Gets Connected," February 1999, p. 46 Ed.]. And with it, DVD finds yet another niche--as corporate sales tool.

Although Web-active DVD movies may soon become commonplace, Web links in DVD corporate presentations will remain a rarity for the foreseeable future--a decided boon for those pioneering companies who dare to tread that path, and for those electronic publishers who dare to blaze the trail.

"The reason corporate DVDs remain rare is economic," says Larry Preston, owner of Excelsior, Minnesota-based Randomworx Interactive, Inc. "While I can press a one-off CD for well under $5, a low-run DVD title will cost the client about $500 for the first disc and $250 for each disc thereafter," he explains. "Everything in DVD still costs more, from the discs themselves, to the writable DVD drive, to the authoring software." Indeed, most production runs average well below the number of discs that would justify a single mass pressing, let al(me frequent updating (particularly for budget-conscious corporate publishers).

So why bother with DVD? According to Preston, video quality is the primary motivating Factor. "With a CD, you're looking at a tiny square of jerky video. With DVD, it's more like taking your client to the movies."

HOW DABBLING BECAME A FULL-TIME GIG

Randomworx first made its mark in producing CBT programs on CD-ROM. As the company branched into corporate marketing material, however, it quickly saw the limitations of a static product. "Things like prices change all the time," Preston says, "and it just doesn't pay to produce a new CD every week."

So Randomworx started "dabbling" in Web sites in 1993. The company quickly moved to database-driven sites, consisting of Dynamic HTML pages generated on-the-fly from the client's database. Soon, Randomworx's customers started asking for Web-deliverable video, while at the same time insisting that it look good enough to match corporate expectations. Unfortunately, bandwidth limitations continue to make that difficult to achieve. Even video on CD-ROMs does not measure up. To make matters worse, video quality varies from machine to machine, i.e., CD video that might look passable on one client's Pentium II system will look unacceptable on another's P-75.

DVD finally makes quality video practical. Now, Randomworx can offer its customers "jaw-droppingly better picture quality," explains Preston. Furthermore, since only the newest machines are apt to have DVD drives installed, publishers can count on much higher processing power. As a bonus, DVD offers premium sound quality.

What's more, DVD can potentially make corporate presentations more portable. For instance, if a presenter arrives at a client's office only to discover that they lack a DVD-ready PC, he could connect a portable DVD player directly to a TV. To do this, though, the publisher must place a more limited "fall-back" presentation on the disc, since DVD-ROM requires processing assistance from the user's PC.

THE CD-TO-DVD SWITCH

As with any new technology, what is possible is not always practical. Indeed, a lot of first-generation hardware and software had to catch up with expectations. "We faced the same problems with early DVDs as we had with early CD-ROMs," Preston says, "but the DVD problems cleared up faster. The learning curve for DVD authoring software is not that different from CD authoring tools. Besides, the quality of DVD-Video outweighs upgrade costs."

In a typical Randomworx corporate Presentation--which combines the capacity and interactivity features of DVD with the immediacy of the Web--the presenter, at some point, hits a button and launches full-screen video. When it comes time to display such time-sensitive information as pricing and availability, the program dials up to the Internet to update its data. (The database remains hidden from those who visit the Web site without the DVD connection.) The video on screen resizes itself to resemble a Web page with multiple frames, which allows both image and pricing to share the screen.

Another section of the hybrid disc includes textual information on the DVD-ROM (which can be updated from a Web site every time the DVD-ROM application is started) to give presenters the most up-to-date information about the products they are about to promote to their audience. The presentation might even include a specialized message from the presenting company's president to the sales prospect.