Microsoft Joins DVD+RW Alliance

[fng]

They are joining Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Mitsubishi Chemical/Verbatim, Philips, Ricoh, Sony, Thomson and Yamaha on the executive/steering committee.

[Ian]

Not surprising. They gave the DVD+RW format their stamp of approval last year.

I hate to say it.. but the DVD-RW format will probably get squeezed out of the market.

[Solr_Flare]

Yeah +R may very well squeeze -R out of the picture in the long haul. With most current purchased dvd standalone players supporting both formats, as the older more picky players get phased out of people's homes then format won't be an issue anymore.

Right now the only main advantage for -R is that the media has been cheaper than +R, but lately I've noticed the media prices are starting to reach equal price levels. Once that happens, either A) both formats will be here to stay, or B) the one with the bigger backing will take full control. As it is, some really big names are backing +R and its hard to see how the smaller -R group can keep it up for much longer.

[HyperYagami]

Yeah +R may very well squeeze -R out of the picture in the long haul. With most current purchased dvd standalone players supporting both formats, as the older more picky players get phased out of people's homes then format won't be an issue anymore.

Right now the only main advantage for -R is that the media has been cheaper than +R, but lately I've noticed the media prices are starting to reach equal price levels. Once that happens, either A) both formats will be here to stay, or B) the one with the bigger backing will take full control. As it is, some really big names are backing +R and its hard to see how the smaller -R group can keep it up for much longer.

Rambus, nuff said. So what if big companies are pushing it? As long as DVD+R is charge more than DVD-R by no matter how much DVD-R is here to stay.

[Kennyshin]

Yeah +R may very well squeeze -R out of the picture in the long haul. With most current purchased dvd standalone players supporting both formats, as the older more picky players get phased out of people's homes then format won't be an issue anymore.

Right now the only main advantage for -R is that the media has been cheaper than +R, but lately I've noticed the media prices are starting to reach equal price levels. Once that happens, either A) both formats will be here to stay, or B) the one with the bigger backing will take full control. As it is, some really big names are backing +R and its hard to see how the smaller -R group can keep it up for much longer.

Rambus, nuff said. So what if big companies are pushing it? As long as DVD+R is charge more than DVD-R by no matter how much DVD-R is here to stay.

I do not think DVD+R is any more expensive than DVD-R. Mitsubishi alone accounts for well over 500 billion US dollars worth of industrial leadership inside Japan. Ritek will soon begin to ship 4x DVD+R and it will be far cheaper than the current 4x Ritek DVD-R or any other 4x DVD-R for that matter. By "soon", now I mean less than 3 to 5 weeks, or it is more likely that Ritek has just started shipping. Some South Korean importers are trying at least. Mitsubishi is a bit aggressive in supporting DVD+R/+RW and they want to keep some market share in this new profitable business. The lowest priced 4x DVD writer in the world has always been the 4x DVD+R writing NEC ND-1100A.

RDRAM lost most of the DRAM market because there was only one large RDRAM manufacturer in the world: Samsung. It has always been a very near monopoly and Samsung really made great profits in the RDRAM market alone for the last few years. That has happened with DVD-R, not DVD+R. Pioneer had a near monopoly in the DVD-R writer drive production while the DVD+R drive market is very competitive.

There are cheap (under $1) Princo and CMC DVD-R media but not that cheap DVD+R media. That's why so many people feel DVD-R is cheaper than DVD+R. That can change easily though. Expect there will be DVD+R/+RW media from Samsung, LG, BeAll, SKC, Saehan as well.

Samsung, for example, wants to have at least half of the world's CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive market this year. Samsung will want more market share with DVD writers, of course. The company cannot have that without producing DVD+R/+RW drives (in addition to various dual, combo, multi, etc.).

[VEFF]

Not surprising. They gave the DVD+RW format their stamp of approval last year.

I hate to say it.. but the DVD-RW format will probably get squeezed out of the market.

I personally am not so sure... Many consumers have invested in DVD-R drives (A03, A04 and A05 based drives), so if nothing else, it would take quite a while.

You may well be right however Ian.
If DVD+RW does win, it will certainly not be because it is any better for the average consumer. DVD-R and DVD-RW satisfy most users' needs very well.

I almost bought into the DVD+RW hype myself a year ago when buying my first DVD burner.
Luckily for me, Philips made a huge mistake in their hardware design by not including DVD+R write support (the +R standard was actually developed/finalized AFTER the release of 1st gen +RW drives) on their first generation DVD+RW drive.
Their tech support wrongly told me (and others) via e-mail the DVDRW208 could burn DVD+R, but I was suspicious thanks to posts on the net about the possiblity it couldn't).
Luckily I also couldn't get the same confirmation over the phone.

While I was waiting for +R capable drives to come out, I saw a super hot deal (March 2002) on a Panasonic DVD-R/DVD-RAM drive (after $100 MIR it was HALF the price of my $499.99 Philips which I had returned once Philips couldn't guarantee that +R support was going to be included).

I was very happy with the lower media prices and the slightly better compatiblity (DVD-R plays on all my DVD capable players/devices).

I luckily sold my Panasonic for a great price just at the right time (one month before DRU-500A Dell hot deal occurred very unexpectedly).
I currently own a DRU-500A and an A05, and even though the Sony supports DVD+R/DVD+RW, I burn only DVD-R (bought a 5 pack of Philips DVD+R discs once).

Microsoft is a big player of course, but DVD-R/-RW, not DVD+R/+RW is currently the official DVD forum standard.

[Kennyshin]

@VEFF

LG is currently the largest optical storage drive manufacturer among the all DVD Forum members. The very first posts at DVDplusRW.org and other forums of mine were concerned about LG DVD writers (in late 2001 and early 2002.) Even though LG is very closely associated with DVD Forum, it has developed DVD+RW/DVD+R (both drives and media) for quite a while in the lab though it took a very long time to commercially announce that.

Lite-On and Samsung own most of the rest of the optical storage market. And both have already announced their support of DVD+RW last year. What does the DVD Forum official support of DVD-R/DVD-RW/DVD-RAM/DVD Multi actually mean?

At least, the three companies are NOT loyal to any forum, alliance, or standard in PC, hardware, cars, drives, players, or whatever. They are all the largest conglomerates (Lite-On actually belongs to something much larger) in East Asia excluding Japan. They will just choose and make whatever will promise them the most revenues and profits and growth and jobs (opportunity to employ more people and to export more.) These all make big differences from how some of the Japanese and European patent-holding companies behave.

Personally, I have already bought over 10,000 DVD media this year. Of course, I don't use them for my own use (not that I resell them for profits either.) Most of them are DVD-R 1x that can actually burn at 2x speed. That is going to change in one or two months as the 10,000 discs were just samples to make a few hundreds of people in South Korea get interested.

Though there are many DVD-R/DVD-RW/DVD-RAM users in the world, that very number is just too negligibly small compared to the number of DVD writers that Samsung, LG, Lite-On, BenQ, and a few other manufactuers are going to produce in the next five years. How many people care about the superiority of SCSI now when most CD writers produced these days are IDE/ATA only?

So here I can add another prediction: Ritek alone will produce billions of DVD+R media from 2004 to 2005. And I have speculated for long about the possibility of Pioneer and the rest of DVD-R/-RW/-RAM supporting manufacturers to switch to DVD+RW. Some of them surely will.

[VEFF]

Kennyshin,

Lots of good info.
I wasn't thinking very far ahead. Anything is possible in two to three years.

Essentially whichever standard has the most powerful (in terms of money invested) backers will eventually win out, but it could take two years for the tide to swing...

Blu-ray is another technology for us all to keep in mind...

[Solr_Flare]

Blue-ray is certainly an interesting technology, but its lack of any real use in current DVD players will result in it sort of being a successor to DVD-RAM. Once Blue-ray hits I expect we will see DVD-RAM phase out to Blueray and +R, -R or both to be the standard for video/audio use. Later, if Blue-Ray proves to be the heir to DVD stand alone players movie wise, then Blue-Ray will certainly take over as the main standard.

As it stands right now, I'd expect that within the next 5 years, one of the two DVDR/RW standards will win out over the other, and until such time, by years end we will probably see dual format burners slowly becoming the norm while the standards are in contention.

As for Blue-Ray....for now I think of it soley as a successor to RAM as a data storage medium with its success in the general market dependant on whether Blue-Ray is choosen as the future for DVD video players and/or future players being compatable with both the current format and Blue-Ray. But certainly, BlueRay will be big in the archive/backup comunity as well as for internal data use.

[dodecahedron]

that is an interesting thought - a drive that will support both Blue-Ray and standard DVD+/-R/RW burning...
<me want...>

[Kennyshin]

As for Blue-Ray....for now I think of it soley as a successor to RAM as a data storage medium with its success in the general market dependant on whether Blue-Ray is choosen as the future for DVD video players and/or future players being compatable with both the current format and Blue-Ray. But certainly, BlueRay will be big in the archive/backup comunity as well as for internal data use.

Maybe you forgot Blu-ray is for a format called "HD-DVD" not HD-DVD-RAM. It is a format developed for HDTV-quality DVD-Video though it is not DVD-Video but something 4-5x better. D-VHS is already popular among those who want to store HDTV-quality video on SOMETHING. Blu-ray is certainly much more useful and practical than D-VHS.

And could any of you use DVD disks in CD-ROM drives? Or, CD disks in VHS or Beta players.

[Funkstar]

I'm sure i read somewhere that Blue-Ray was designed to be primerily a (re)writable format from the start, as oposed to being a bolt on format like CD-R and DVD-R.

In the pre-recorded disk market i see blue-ray as being a complimentary format to DVD (like Laserdisk was to VHS in a way). Those that want HD films will buy blue-ray titles. The vast majority of people, the average Joe Public for example, is more than happy with DVD and has no interest in HD titles.

Blue-ray would also make a great data format. 27gig on a 12cm disk would be fantastic. This is where i see the main market for the technology. Even Joe Public would like that in a couple of years time when the have 500gig of drive space or something

[Kennyshin]

I'm sure i read somewhere that Blue-Ray was designed to be primerily a (re)writable format from the start, as oposed to being a bolt on format like CD-R and DVD-R.

But it has been the trend. DVD+RW was also first designed to be mainly a rewritable format which was why the write-once DVD+R was introduced so late. Now, DVD+RW media cost as low as nearly US$1.5 per unit.

In the pre-recorded disk market i see blue-ray as being a complimentary format to DVD (like Laserdisk was to VHS in a way). Those that want HD films will buy blue-ray titles. The vast majority of people, the average Joe Public for example, is more than happy with DVD and has no interest in HD titles.

The vast majority of people are not that interested in PC at all. They are more interested in housing, sex, and health care. Just a small percentage of people use PC daily. And just a small percentage of PC users use CD/DVD writers daily. And there are many times more CD writer users than DVD writer users. Since there are practically no commercially available HD-DVD (or whatever to call it) titles, what does it mean to say they are more than happy with DVD and has no interest in HD?

DVD could never make the billions of TV viewers and PC users (combined) to move into the digital audio and video market. HD will. First in East Asia and later gradually in North America and finally in Europe and the other regions.

However, I understand why people like you'd want to say so since you are satisfied with DVD. I am not. Never bought any (unused) TV, VHS, DVD at all.