Content Access and Early Market Entry Will Win the High-Definition DVD Race, says ABI Research.OYSTER BAY, N.Y. -- Access to large entertainment libraries, and first-to-market advantage, will determine the outcome of the contest between competing high-definition DVD alliances, says a new study from ABI Abi (ā`bī) [short for Abijah], in the Bible, King Hezekiah's mother. (Application Binary Interface) A specification for a specific hardware platform combined with the operating system. Research. The contest will be joined in earnest by mid-2005, according to Vamsi Sistla, the company's director of residential entertainment technologies. Sony's recently announced purchase of MGM MGM in full Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. U.S. corporation and film studio. It was formed when the film distributor Marcus Loew, who bought Metro Pictures in 1920, merged it with the Goldwyn production company in 1924 and with Louis B. Mayer Pictures in 1925. - including over 9000 movies in the MGM catalog -- has refocused attention on content ownership in the struggle for the next generation DVD DVD: see digital versatile disc. DVD in full digital video disc or digital versatile disc Type of optical disc. The DVD represents the second generation of compact-disc (CD) technology. market. The rival HD-DVD HD-DVD High Definition Digital Versatile Disk group can already claim Warner Video, 20th Century Fox, and Disney among its content providers. The two camps hoping to become the de facto standard Hardware or software that is widely used, but not endorsed by a standards organization. Contrast with de jure standard. de facto standard - A widespread consensus on a particular product or protocol which has not been ratified by any official standards body, such as ISO, for the high-capacity DVDs of the near future - Sony and Matsushita with their "Blu-ray" technology and the HD-DVD group including Toshiba, NEC (NEC Corporation, Tokyo, www.nec.com, www.necus.com) An electronics conglomerate known in the U.S. for its monitors. In Japan, it had the lion's share of the PC market until the late 1990s (see PC 98). NEC was founded in Tokyo in 1899 as Nippon Electric Company, Ltd. and others - compete on both technical and commercial grounds. With players already released, Sony was first to market. However Sanyo recently announced its intention to build HD-DVD players. "In the longer term," Sistla believes, "vendors offering dual-standard players may be the biggest winners and in the short term early adopters might get shut out from the content on the competing format." Initially Blu-ray disks held more gigabytes than HD-DVD disks; but the latter's proponents replied that, with their more efficient MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group) An ISO/ITU standard for compressing digital video. Pronounced "em-peg," it is the universal standard for digital terrestrial, cable and satellite TV, DVDs and digital video recorders (DVRs). 4 compression, HD-DVDs could store longer movies. Sony recently leapfrogged by adopting MPEG4 too, and next month will announce plans for much larger 200 MB disks. But Blu-ray disks require completely new manufacturing plant, while HD-DVDs, more similar to today's DVDs, will be cheaper to manufacture. The battle for DVD supremacy is just one of a wide range of topics presented in the latest edition of ABI Research's Residential Entertainment Technologies Quarterly Service, which analyzes world market trends in DTV, PVR, game console and portable AV devices. Founded in 1990 and headquartered in New York, ABI Research maintains global operations that support annual research programs, quarterly intelligence services and market reports in wireless, automotive, semiconductors, broadband, and energy. Their market research products can be found on the Web at www.abiresearch.com, or by calling 516.624.3113. |
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