DVD gut check: where does the storage industry stand? (Storage Networking).

The DVD Forum is an international association of hardware manufacturers, software firms, and other DVD users, created for the purpose of exchanging and disseminating ideas and information about the DVD Format and its technical capabilities, improvements, and innovations. Founded in 1995 under the original name DVD Consortium, today's membership includes more than 200 companies. The 10 founding companies include Hitachi, Ltd., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric  Corporation, Pioneer Electronic Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics N.V., Sony Corporation, Thomson Multimedia, Time Warner Inc., Toshiba Corporation and Victor Company of Japan, Ltd.

The DVD+RW Alliance is a voluntary group of over 50 industry-leading personal computing manufacturers, optical storage and electronics manufacturers including Dell, HP, MCC/Verbatim, Philips Electronics, Ricoh Company Ltd., Sony Corporation, Thomson multimedia and Yamaha Corporation.

In a recent comparison study, it's estimated that by the end of 2002, there will be 3.2 million DVD-R/RW capable drives on the market, compared to only 1.5 million DVD+R/RW drives. One reason for the gap is that DVD-R-capable drives are currently being sold by a broad range of computer manufacturers, including Apple, Sony, Compaq, Gateway, NEC, and a few other smaller companies. Compounding their success, DVD-R/RW format has multi-manufacturer support by Pioneer, Hitachi-LG, Panasonic, and Toshiba. In comparison, DVD+R/RW drives are limited to sales through computer manufacturers HP, Dell and some aftermarket brands. The drives themselves are all primarily sourced almost exclusively from Ricoh.

To date, the mainstream consumer has been the main proponent of DVD and has adopted it faster than any previous technology. In fact, the DVD Entertainment Group estimates that nearly half of all US homes will have DVD capability by the end of this year. For consumers, recording to DVD seems the next logical step pushing manufactures to meet their expectations for home video creation and playback.

The vast majority of drive manufacturers, OEMs and set-top player manufacturers support DVD-R/RW as the writable DVD format best positioned to satisfy the needs of the consumer market for both computer drives and set-top boxes. Today, the combination of computer drives and set-top recorders shipped to market that support the DVD Forum's DVD-R format has far outpaced the competition.

DVD Formats Combine to Conquer

This year, DVD manufacturers began releasing a succession of multi-format drives, including the DVD-Multi compliant drive and the DVD +/- RW drive. With this shift towards active support for multi-format drives by the optical drive manufacturers, it is expected that this value-added feature will stimulate user interest and spurn purchase decisions.

The DVD-Multi supports the DVD-R (write-once), DVD-RAM and DVD-RW standards developed by the DVD Forum, as well as the CD-R and CD-RW formats. DVD-Multi drives from Hitachi-LG Data Storage Co., Inc. were the first to reach the consumer market by shipping in personal computers (PCs) at the end of May 2002. Since then, DVD-Multi drives from Matsushita Electric In-dustrial Co., Ltd, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, and Toshiba Corp. have also begun shipping. The DVD-Multi specification covers all current formats, which have been approved by DVD Forum, including DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-Audio, DVD-RAM, DVD-R and DVD-RW recording. Formats created outside the DVD Forum are not covered.

For consumers, the DVD-Multi was just the solution they'd been waiting for. Providing broad format selection in one drive, consumers could take maximum advantage of each one: using DVD-RAM for backup, and either DVD-R or DVD-RW for storing and sharing their multimedia (pictures, music and video) files.

The new plus-minus drives traverse the record-and-play formats of both DVD-RW and DVD+RW. Supported by NEC, Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd. and Sony Corp. DVD plus-minus RW drives will support CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, and DVD+RW.

Counting the Cost

When writable and re-writable DVD drives first entered the market, there were several hurdles to overcome. Cost was one of the initial impediments for the growth of DVD in the consumer space. Unlike the Zip drive, which debuted charging $100 per media cartridge and practically gave away the drives, early DVD adopters paid as much as $5,000 for their limited-use drives and another $100 per piece of media. Thankfully, drives and media from all of the manufacturers are more competitively priced and consumer-friendly, with numbers falling at a fairly fast pace. On average, an internal EIDE DVD+RW drive costs under $300, while the same DVD-RAM/-R drive typically costs about $100 less. Media is also widely available from such manufacturers as Maxell, Mitsubishi Chemical Company, TDK, Verbatim and others. Today, consumers can purchase a 4.7GB DVD-R for as little as 89 cents.

Software was another issue. Early utilities were best described as slow, difficult, even clunky. Now leaders in the software industry offer a broad range of consumer and professional-level support with intuitive features and fast loading frames enabling virtually anyone to rip and share their own music compilation or homemade video in minutes.

The introduction of FireWire (IEEE 1394) drives also pushed DVD further into the consumer arena, providing features such as "hot-plug" capability and data transfer rates of up to 408Mbps. The addition of Fire Wire also enabled consumers to share their DVD drives easily between their home, work, and mobile computers for even greater economy.

The Choice for High-End Storage

For networked environments and high-capacity applications, the DVD choice is clear; DVD-RAM and DVD Multi-drives are the order of the day. In fact, out of all of the jukebox manufacturers, not a single one offers a +R/RW solution, and none have announced their intentions to offer new library configurations with DVD +/- RW support.

One reason is, although incompatible with most DVD-ROM drives and DVD-Video players, for data use, DVD-RAM still leads DVD-RW and DVD+RW as the safest, most reliable rewritable storage solution. With 100,000 rewrites for DVD-RAM vs. 1,000 re-writes for DVD-RW and DVD+RW, DVD-RAM also provides random writes and defect management as standard features. With +RW, these features are only an option per drive. As an added convenience, finalization by the user is not required with DVD-RAM.

For desktop video applications and shared data requirements, nothing beats DVD-R and DVD-RW. Although a non-rewritable format, DVD-R is capable of storing up to two hours of theater-quality video or 400,000+ documents on a single-sided 4.7GB disc that can be played back on virtually every DVD-ROM drive and DVD player in use today (an estimated 85% of all players). DVD-RW is the rewritable version of DVD-R and is also compatible with many of the newer DVD-ROM drives and DVD-Video players.

Enterprise Applications

DVD-based solutions can be found in every major industrial market integrated into robotic library systems to provide ultra-reliable storage that ensures quick and easy file access. DVD-based systems have experienced an increased popularity in many markets due in part to its optical properties. Access to data in the library is superior to equivalent tape based systems and the recording properties of DVD provide long-term historical preservation of data which is attractive to many companies. Broadcast, medical, financial, pre-press, and other commercial markets all use DVD-based systems to insure their data's long-term integrity. In proper storage environments, DVD media can maintain data file integrity up to 100 years. Furthermore, media interchange in achieved easily by using UDF (universal data format) allowing media to be exported outside of the library system and read in standard DVD-ROM readers.

Today's libraries offering multiple-terabyte hardware solutions for a broad range of applications, including exceptionally cost-effective, unattended digital broadcast playback, the capacity and the performance required for Internet, Intranet, and Extranet storage, high-performance video editing, and more.

Another reason for DVD-RAM's and DVD-Multi's broad acceptance in this arena include the drives' performance, capacity and compliance with industry standards. Ultimately, these factors make it easy for application developers and system integrators to design and recommend solutions that take advantage of the features and benefits of both DVD-RAM and DVD-R. And with media costs dropping below 40 cents/GB, high-capacity storage and retrieval is not only fast and reliable, it is also very economical. Organizations implement online DVD-RAM/R jukeboxes to provide workgroup, departmental and enterprise-wide access to documents, data and images to enhance both individual and corporate productivity and decision-making.

For even broader application and environment flexibility, network managers can choose library systems that give them the freedom to mix and combine DVD video, DVD-R/RW, and DVD-RAM as well as CD-R and CD-RW disks within a single library cabinet.

GLOBAL DVD MARKET SHARE

By format, Q1, 2002

DVD Forum Formats         77.3%
DVD+RW Formats            22.7%

Total: 767 Million Units

Source: Santa Clara Consulting

Note: Table made from pie chart

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Chuck Larabie is vice president of sales at ASACA (Golden, Colo.)