DVD--Don't Plan On Attending Its Wake Any Time Soon.

A portion of this letter appeared in the July issue of Computer Technology Review. It appears here in its entirety.

Let's address some of the points in your DVD article ("DVD's Death Sentence?," page 46, CTR, April 2000) in order of their importance. Holographic technology is actually very interesting. It was very interesting when we first saw it over 25 years ago when it was being developed for tape applications. We saw a lot of excellent demonstrations. The capacity potentials were breathtaking. Unfortunately, we never saw an economic, shippable product.

Does this hold true for the current version of holography? We doubt it. In fact, if we are very confident that, in three to five years, we 11 see a real product, it will be expensive but real. Current projections are that it will take another three to five years for it to become cost effective.

What will enter the arena as "promising" during this period? We honestly don't have a clue, but we can all be very confident that something will emerge from someone's lab.

The reason DVD hasn't eclipsed CD has absolutely nothing to do with shipping product and a promised "better" product. The industry had a vision in 1995 for the next generation storage solution. The content development, computer manufacturing, and storage industry hoped that, in the blink of an eye, we would move to the bigger, better solution. The industry believed it and forecast some breathtaking growth. Market analysts bought into the story and, suddenly, they were forecasting humongous sales for DVD. Manufacturers believed the forecasts and so did the media. When the industry experts' forecasts weren't met as was projected, people started to grumble that DVD was a failed concept and we all looked around for someone... anyone... to blame. Of course...it was the manufacturers' fault.

There are over 60 million CD drives in use today around the globe. They cost almost nothing for the OEM to install in a system. CD-RW drives that are capable of writing -R and -RW media cost OEMs under $70. Media is basically free--$1-$3 and, surprise, for about 80 percent of the moving of data that we all do this is sufficient. With these economic factors in place, do you feel everyone in their collective right mind is going to throw out a good storage solution for a bigger, better solution?

Recently, we were talking with a government IS manager who was weighing whether he should stick with the old tried and true MO or move to DVD. His concern was that he had to have a storage solution he could be assured would be readable in seven to ten years.

We couldn't absolutely guarantee him that, in ten years, the files he had stored on DVD would be readable. We couldn't even make that guarantee with microfilm and that technology has been around since before the computer, but we advised him to look at the prime movers for DVD. Not the drive manufacturers, but the entertainment and computer industries. They want the high capacity, low cost, universal storage solution for business, education, and entertainment applications. Our comment to the government IS manager was that these forces would make certain the solutions were delivered..."even if they have to bang the manufacturers' collective heads together."

In a perfect world, the DVD standards would have been developed and approved all at one time and manufacturers would have immediately produced and shipped the -ROM, -R, and -RAM products and the "discussion" would have ended. Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world.

The fact is that the standards do exist today, including the ability to write media and exchange it across all devices. Products are shipping -ROM, -RAM, DVD players, and DVD recorders that will allow users to move rewritable discs from -RAM drives to any of these other devices. Is the media backward compatible to every ROM drive that is being used today? No!

Yet this is also true of CD-RW. We can produce a CD-R with our own CD-RW drive and be "fairly sure" almost anyone can read it on their PC, their home audio system, their personal player, and in their car. We can produce a CD-RW disc and still have to cross our fingers when we send it to you. More than 50 percent of the time, it can't be read.

The installed base of DVD-ROMs is less than four years old compared to the 25 year installed base of CD-ROMs. The sale of DVD-based devices--business and consumer--has been spectacular by any measure in this short time span. Put this in perspective by examining the fact that it took more than 15 years for CDs to achieve the same level of market penetration.

2.6GB/5.2GB DVD-RAM has been shipping for about two years and the production ramp-up has been modest at best, but, with the new 4.7GB/9.4GB drives, that's going to change. The major manufacturers are already shipping drives to system manufacturers. By the end of the year, two to three other firms will be producing drives. The media will be coming from six different manufacturers. Every library manufacturer has a DVD-RAM-based product offering and one of them has already completed their upgrade from 5.2GB drives/media to 9.4GB drives/media. The others are standing in line to get their drives to meet the market's demand.

It's true that there are two rewritable DVD standards from the DVD Forum, if you can live with sequential writing and no defect management support, as in copying your home movies or copying a TV show for later viewing. DVD-RW will be okay when it begins shipping later this year, but, if you're writing a lot of different files, data, image, video, data integrity, and random access, DVD-RAM is the solution you want now and tomorrow.

Do you want to take the media from either drive and play it in the other device or in a DVD-ROM, DVD player, or DVD recorder? Surprise! The DVD Forum computer manufacturers, content developers, drive/media manufacturers recently passed a standard they call DVD3, which spells out that media should be able to be moved from device to device. Like all standards, it's not mandatory that everyone complies, but consumer pressure will force compliance, just as it did with the older MultiRead "standard" for CD-RW.

The standards are in place, not as fast as everyone would have liked, but unfortunately, you've never had this many different "interested" parties involved in the decisions. CD was simple. Two companies agree on how to split the royalties and they tell you what you're going to use. The Forum had to develop solutions that met the needs of everyone.

Yet DVD is far from facing a death sentence. Hollywood, content developers, computer manufacturers, media manufacturers, and all of the shipping product manufacturers are committed to helping the technology grow into adulthood.

Today, our server here at the office has a 50GB tape drive, CD-RW, and DVD-RAM installed. My desktop system has a CD-RW and DVD-RAM drive in it. My notebook has a CD-RW drive in it. We'll probably have the same configuration when we upgrade the three at the end of the year. If you want to send me a movie that you produced on DVD-R or DVD-RAM, we may view it on my desktop DVD-RAM system or on the DVD recorder we're buying later this year. If you choose to send me a CD-R or CD-RW disc with data on it, we'll be able to play it back on any of these devices. Can you say that with any of the "promised" products?

Standards "squabbles" didn't retard DVD attach rate. Supply shortages and production schedules kept DVD from overwhelming the market as was originally forecast but these issues are being rectified, as we speak. The numbers by this time next year will be significant, but so will cheap-to-free CD shipment volumes. We wouldn't plan on attending the DVD wake any time soon.

Andy Marken is the president of Marken Communications