Move Over, DVD-RAM Here Comes DVD-RW.

After having the rewritable DVD market to themselves for nearly three years, the manufacturers of DVD-RAM are going to have competition from Pioneer--the company that created the market for recordable DVD in the first place.

The new rewritable format is dubbed DVD-RW. "Conceptually, the technology is similar to phase-change CD-RW," said Bob Niimi, vice president of group business development at Pioneer North America Inc. The initial product will be a home-video recorder, with MPEG-2 compression built in. Announced in the U.S. at Comdex, and exhibited first at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show, it should be released around the second quarter of 2001, with a list price around $2,500.

That's pretty high, considering that the most expensive VCRs cost less than $1,000 today, and some low-end recorders retail for under $200. But what will probably appeal most to potential customers is that MPEG-2 compression enables each 4.7GB disk to hold up to two hours of video programming--not only what's dubbed "off-air" but home-video and digital still pictures too. And like Pioneer's original write-once DVD-R format, disks recorded in the DVD-RW format are specified to be readable in most of today's DVD-Video players and DVD-ROM drives.

"What we're aiming for is maximum compatibility," explained Andy Parsons, senior vice president for product development. "We probably can't get compatibility with all existing players and drives." Nonetheless, any compatibility with today's installed base is something that DVD-RAM simply can not match.

The problem for Pioneer--if indeed it turns out to be a problem--can be traced to the fact that some DVD-ROMs and DVD-Video disks are manufactured with two data layers. Some drives automatically "look" for that second layer, and may reject a disk if it's not there. Also, DVD-RW disks will carry a new and unique media identification code that may not be recognized by older drives. Both of these issues can be resolved with "minor firmware modifications," Parsons said.

New firmware would also enable read-only DVD drives to accept DVD-RAM disks. And the DVD-RAM manufacturers (Hitachi, Toshiba, and Panasonic) are lobbying the DVD Forum for a spec called "DVD-Multi" that would codify what future firmware would need to read DVD-RAM disks. But there's no question that, compared to DVD-RAM media, DVD-RW media will more nearly resemble the replicated disks that today's DVD-ROM and DVD-Video drives "expect" to read.

Pioneer is lobbying the DVD Forum too, for a spec that would cover both DVD-RW's (current) video and (future) data applications. And by September it had signed up 33 drive and/or media companies for a new industry group called the RW Products Promotion Initiative (RWPPI).

Write-Once Too

The new DVD-RW drive will also record Pioneer's 4.7GB write-once DVD-R disks. (There's no write-once version of DVD-RAM.) But Pioneer will bifurcate the market by formulating two different media types. The current version--the second-generation successor to Pioneer's original 3.95GB media--will be renamed "DVD-R for Authoring." It's optimized to respond to the 635nm laser in Pioneer's current generation of DVD-R drives, and is targeted to professional or "industrial" video producers and content publishers, for whom the disks may serve as masters for replication.

The new alternative media, to be called "DVD-R for General Use," will respond only to the new drive's 650nm laser wavelength. While professionals may use them too, they will be targeted to the consumer market. They will also have a built-in copy-protection scheme that will prevent them from accepting files generated from suitably copy-protected DVD-ROMs and DVD-Videos.

Moreover, Pioneer will manufacture separate and mutually incompatible drives for DVD for Authoring and DVD for General Use disks. In short: while either disk can be read by a DVD-ROM drive or a DVD-Video player, it cannot be recorded except in the specific type of drive (-Authoring or -General Use) for which it was manufactured.

A DVD-RW drive for PCs was still only a prototype when Niimi and Parsons spoke with me in September. So it is a write-once DVD-R drive with a 650nm laser diode that, at least initially, will cross over into the data storage market. Pricing and availability could be announced as early as Comdex.

The shift from a 635nm to a 650nm wavelength also gives Pioneer an opportunity to fix what seems to be the only serious flaw in its existing DVD-R drives. Reportedly, excessive heat from the 635nm laser diode has adversely affected some drives' performance over time; so far, Pioneer has offered DVD-R only as an external drive with a fan. "The 650s have a better heat characteristic [i.e., they run cooler]," Parsons told me, "so a DVD-R drive for general use can be made in an internal version."

DVD-RW disks will ship as bare media. Without cartridges or jackets around them, they can be used not only in tray-loaded drives but in drives fed by slots. And the phase-change recording layer is specified to sustain--for up to 1,000 rewrite cycles--the same ratio of amorphous-to-crystalline reflectivity (i.e., 18- to 30 percent) as that of replicated DVD-ROMs.

The Next Big Thing?

Clearly, Pioneer is betting that video--not data--will be the killer-app for DVD recording. Given the huge size of the home-video market, not to mention the enormous storage requirements of even the most tightly compressed video programming, that's a fair bet. What's still in development at Pioneer is the next logical step along that route: a home-video recorder that would combine DVD and HDD drives. Most likely, the way would be paved for such a device by the HDD-based VCR-replacements (such as TiVO) that are just now entering the market, and which enable functions such as simultaneous playback and recording that tape-based VCRs can not perform.

Adding a DVD drive would obviate the need for a standalone DVD player, and also enable home-video archiving. "It's a future product concept, that probably wouldn't appear as a product until late in 2002," Niimi acknowledged, "but the two recorder technologies will coexist before then anyway, in some form."

Though DVD-RW technology has been a topic of conversation in the industry since 1997, Pioneer--to its credit--has not really gone public about it until now. By comparison, members of the DVD+RW ("plus-R-W") consortium have been promising--for just as long--that their rewritable format would also be readable in today's drives. But they have never met their own announced release dates with a commercial product that does just that.

Of course, the DVD-RAM manufacturers are not standing still. And unlike Pioneer, they started by targeting the data storage market with an internal PC drive based on Panasonic's phase-change "PD" technology, which was not compatible with the original specs DVDs. The DVD-RAM makers offered first 2.6GB and then--since last June--4.7GB capacity, and have worked with jukebox manufacturers to make it a viable alternative to CD--in some cases enabling the upgrade to be done in the field. The latest DVD-RAM media is dual-sided, holding 4.7GB per side, yet it retails for only about $30--the same price at which the original 2.6GB version was launched.

Pioneer's first DVD-RW disks will probably cost about the same, but they'll be single-sided and will work only with a $2,500 drive. Admittedly, a video recorder must include far more circuitry, such as an MPEG-2 board, than a PC drive needs. But when that core DVD-RW engine is released as a PC drive, it will have to be aggressively forward-priced to match DVD-RAM. An internal ATAPI DVD-RAM drive lists (!) for only $549 today, and will surely sell for less by the time Pioneer releases something comparable.

Still, Pioneer--and Pioneer alone--can finally boast that, for now and for the next year or two, its disks can be read by the installed base of DVD readers and players. So DVD-RW will be a serious competitor to DVD-RAM, and--in my opinion--probably its only competitor.