COPY PROTECTION, LICENSING ISSUES PUT DVD PLAYERS ON PAUSE.

Byline: Evan Ramstad Associated Press 

Higher-capacity compact discs called DVDs will not go on sale as planned in September, delayed by copy protection and licensing dilemmas.

The delay threatens to push the debut of the new DVD format past the big holiday splash when people pay the most attention to new products.

But the delay isn't expected to affect the long-term success of the new discs and DVDs are still likely to replace regular CDs for software and music and take over the prerecorded videotape market for movies.

DVDs, sometimes called digital video discs or digital versatile discs, are the same size as existing CDs but hold 7 to 14 times as much data. That's enough to store a feature-length movie or all nine Beethoven symphonies.

The most important unresolved issue is how to prevent illicit copies of the discs that would be crisper than videotape copies and could be transmitted electronically.

Also yet to be worked out are fees for companies that invented the discs and a method of coding the CDs so manufacturers can control which titles can be played on machines sold in specific regions of the world - a practice already common with prerecorded videotapes.

The companies that consistently have said they would bring DVD equipment to market first, Toshiba and RCA, now say they won't make their Labor Day rollout target.

``There might be some delay due to these issues,'' said Toshiba spokesman Ken Ishihara. ``We expected that these matters, copy protection and regional coding, would be solved earlier. It took more time than expected.''

The company now is aiming for October, though Ishihara noted it has not started producing DVD players. Toshiba is one of 10 companies developing DVD specifications, which are not yet final.

Thomson Consumer Electronics, maker of RCA and GE brand products, has just filmed a TV commercial for its DVD player, the first versions of which are being manufactured by Matsushita. But a spokesman said prospects for a fall rollout are now just 50-50.

``If you don't have software, you'd be silly to launch hardware,'' said Thomson spokesman Frank McCann. ``But we're still very ready from a marketing standpoint.''

Sony and Philips won't produce DVD players and discs until next year, though they have said that for some time.

Movie studios are unwilling to bring out products on DVDs until there is a technical, not just legal, method to protect them from being copied. Illegal copying is already a big problem for movies that are on videotape.

Studio executives are worried that DVDs will pose a bigger problem since the discs don't degrade in quality the way videotape does. In addition, digital data can be shared over telephone networks and the Internet in a way that videotapes cannot.

Computer makers and software firms, while supportive of copying restrictions, don't want to see a technical method placed into copyright law because that might inhibit better copy protection ideas from being developed later.

On June 21 representatives from all the involved companies met in Washington to discuss the technical issues on digital copying, including on DVDs.

Engineers have met several times since to resolve the copying issue, focusing first on a method to prevent copies from one digital disc to another. There is no target date for completion, executives and representatives of trade groups said.

The delay wouldn't even be noticed if it weren't for the extraordinarily public way that technical standards for the discs were formed. Two big Japanese companies - Toshiba and Sony - had different ideas for designing the discs and openly fought for backers among other electronics firms, movie and music producers and software makers.

They reached a compromise on major design elements last fall while details have been hammered out in committees involving many companies since.

Failure to start production by early this fall will make it difficult for manufacturers to have a big quantity of DVD products ready by the holidays.

``I don't know anybody who is expecting that the week after the DVD player launches it will have the penetration that VCRs do,'' said Geoffrey Tully, a consultant who follows DVD developments for the Interactive Multimedia Association, a trade group of more than 800 software firms.

``The reasonable thing to assume is, barring a major technological meltdown, it is going to achieve a substantial penetration in the marketplace,'' he said. ``You can guess all day long when it's going to be.''