DIGITAL L.A. DVDS' TECHNOLOGY UNRIVALED - BUT FOR HOW LONG?

Byline: David Bloom 

These are good times for DVD, which the Consumer Electronics Association merrily bills as the most rapidly embraced new entertainment format in history. At the recent DVD Entertainment Conference here in Los Angeles, many of the speakers showed even more reasons for glee.

More than 8.5 million DVD players have been shipped (half a million in July alone), according to the CEA. More than 7,400 DVD movies have been released, not counting probably as many more adult film titles.

And the pace of acceptance should only accelerate in coming months, particularly with the arrival of several new gaming consoles, led by Sony's PlayStation 2 debut on Oct. 26, that all use DVD drives. Those machines, which also include Microsoft's X Box and Nintendo's GameCube (nee Dolphin), all will play DVD movies, compact discs of music and high-end games created specifically for each machine.

Finally, there's the long-awaited arrival of DVD Audio, a format that takes advantage of DVD's wonderful home-theater sound capabilities.

Of course, none of this is quite here yet. The biggest obstacle: The Powers That Be still haven't settled DVD Audio's last niggling format details, though that hasn't stopped some companies and artists from creating discs and players.

``DVD Audio has been long in coming,'' acknowledged Paul Bishow, the format's launch director for Universal Music Group. ``It's proving to be the longest pregnancy in history. But we think it's the next (big) music format, with features that are better than CD quality. It begins to change the listening experience in a way that never has before.''

DVD Audio records more information, more frequently, than is done for CDs, allowing for a richer, truer sound distinguishable even to a stone-eared audio hack such as myself.

For you technical types, that means where CDs record 16 bits of sound information more than 44 thousand times per second, DVD Audio records 24 bits of information 96,000 times per second (and for really high-end recordings, up to 192,000 times per second).

The biggest change though, isn't about cycles and bits. It's about channels, 5.1 of them instead of stereo's two, just like DVD Video uses for home-theater systems. That's front-right, -left and -center speakers, rear- left and -right speakers, and a ``.1'' subwoofer for bass sounds, creating a surround-sound effect that can make you literally feel engulfed by a performance, with the band playing all around you.

Done right, it's a remarkable experience. But that's the rub. Someone has to go back in and redo all those wonderful albums you've been listening to all these years.

You can't take a stereo recording designed for left and right speakers and split it 5.1 ways. You have to remix the original master tapes so that, say, the saxophone is heard out of the left-front speaker, the guitar in the two rear speakers, and the bass and drums rumbling from the subwoofer.

And to redo classic albums for reissue in the 5.1 format means finding all those old master tapes of the original recording (often a daunting challenge) and virtually reconstructing the music for the new audio architecture.

There are other obstacles, too. The few hundred music titles available that are using the existing DVD sound specifications can be played on most existing DVD players. But there's no guarantee future DVD Audio recordings will play on those devices (though it's likely most discmakers will ensure they can).

DVD Audio is also fending off a competing audio format, Super Audio CD, though it faces the challenges of any new entertainment technology without DVD Audio's built-in advantage as kissing cousin to an existing format.

Bishow and others wouldn't predict when the DVD Audio format will be finalized. When it happens, you should start seeing not only combination players that will accommodate DVD Video and Audio, CDs and more, but also specialized players, particularly for car audio's multiple-speaker systems.

DVD Audio discs also will come with lots of add-on features, just as DVD Video often does, including lyrics, photo galleries, biographies and more.

Expect the format's video abilities to be exploited when companies get past classic rock reissues targeting wealthy baby boomers, Bishow said:

``I believe once dance and hip-hop musicians get involved and start using the visual elements ... they're going to surprise us all.''

SITE OF THE WEEK

--Requiem for a Dream: Web site for the about-to-open independent movie of the same name from Darren Aronofsky, whose striking sci-fi first feature, ``Pi,'' also came with a beautifully done Web home (www.pithemovie.com).

--Where: www.requiemforadream.com.

--What's cool: Based on a 1978 book by Hubert Selby Jr. (who also did ``Last Exit to Brooklyn''), the movie's site is a fractured, phantasmic visual feast, opening with a faux commercial Web site, then a second one, rended by what looks like technical snafus on the site itself, and all undergirded by beautiful, haunting music. It's not big on linearity, but its makers did a great job stretching the artistic abilities of the Web.

--Features: Navigation is a challenge, because nothing is obvious or straightforward. Click around when the screen stops changing, and you'll probably start something else happening. There's a trailer to the film (a 5.8-megabyte download, so be patient), but you may be hard-pressed to find it. Though the film is rated NC-17, there's nothing inappropriate on the site.

--You'll like this if: People who like both offbeat Web sites and movies. Think your Web fave is good enough for Site of the Week? Send your suggestions to [e-mail]

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Photos:

Requiem for a Dream 

Box: Site of the Week (see text)