This article was published in the October 1997 issue of the industry newsletter, the Multimedia Monitor. Copyright 1997, Phillips Business Information, Inc. For more information about the Monitor contact 1-301/424-3338 (Inside U.S. 1/800-777-5006) Fax 301/309-3847. EMAIL [email protected] Appears here by permission.
These are very interesting times that are developing as we watch DVD come onto the scene, preceded and accompanied by much public posturing, several false starts, and lengthy behind the scenes negotiations. This bigger-than-life soap opera is unfolding among a staggering array of players who come from an astonishing variety of venues. From the consumer electronics heavyweights, to Hollywood's moguls, to the computer industry's geniuses, DVD is a hot item!
Well, many of us veterans who did multimedia before multimedia was cool maintain that we still cannot quite do as much with digital media today or even in the near term in terms of high quality interactions with video as we could with our old Level III interactive videodisc systems. Technically a lot is possible, but the complexity of the digital data streams that are used and the expensive tools that are available combine to make it difficult to arrive at the same levels of interaction that were possible before. The kicker is that, although we can do less in many ways than we could do before, what we can do, can be done by a lot more people than ever possible.
Therein lies much of the excitement with DVD. The incredible numbers that are predicted by many analysts for the anticipated installed base of DVD players cause many marketing directors to salivate like Pavlov's dogs as they listen to the cash registers ringing in their minds.
It is true that developments are picking up steam, but while the future looks bright for most, it also looks quite gloomy for others. On the one hand we have Peter Biddle of Microsoft predicting 15 million machines with DVD-ROM in the marketplace by Christmas of 1998 (See the Monitor, September 1997). On the other we have Jesse Berst (See ) advising readers "You've Got to Be Crazy to Buy DVD Now," the title of his 5 September column on his "ZD Net AnchorDesk". Are things really in such a confused state?
Well first off, Berst is all wet. The Sony/Philips/HP announcement of a DVD+RW technology that is incompatible with the DVD-RAM specification already accepted by the DVD Forum as standard is way off base. I exagerate perhaps a little, but this newly announced technology has about as much to do with DVD-ROM as Zip, Jaz, and Syquest drives have to do with 3 ½" floppies. Furthermore, the Sony/Philips/HP promises to make things easier in the long term than the already agreed upon standard, since it will supposedly be easier to make the next generation DVD-ROM drives compatible with discs created on their DVD-RAM drives. This is a far sight better than the need to have a disc in a caddy that is compatible with the drive currently required by the DVD Forum standard, creating a technology that sits off on its own, incompatible with all DVD-ROMs of the present or the future.
So if the bad news is not so bad after all, what is the good news? There are several pieces of good news, but the best is from Disney who announced on 4 September that will be releasing titles in the DVD-Video format. Disney's announcement will most certainly put pressure on Fox and Paramount to offer titles in the DVD Video format. Not to be forgotten is C-Cube's announcement regarding a single chip codec for MPEG-2, something that will drastically reduce hardware costs for encoding digital data streams. Also Toshiba announced on 6 August that it is developing a slim DVD-ROM drive for notebook computers. Finally, the standard configuration for all computers at 200Mhz for Gateway Computers now includes DVD-ROM drives. There are other items, but it is clear here the excitement that is building around DVD-ROM.
Michael Bush is Associate Professor of French and Instructional Science
at Brigham Young University and a partner in Alpine Media, a company specializing
in multimedia development for education, assessment and foreign language
training. Bush may be reached at Alpine Media, Suite G1, 560 South
State Street, Orem, Utah, 84058, 801/2264283, email:
[email protected]. See other articles he has written on his Web
site, Multimedia and Digital
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