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CD-R and CD-RW Drives

RECORDABLE DVD: What's All the Bickering About?

Alfred Poor

No matter what game you're watching, you can't tell the players without a scorecard--and in this game, you'll find some players on the rosters of more than one team. There's always some confusion surrounding the rollout of any new hardware technology, but moving from recordable CD to the next step--read/write/erase capability for DVD--has resulted in a tangle of overlapping technologies and confusing claims from some of the industry's heavy hitters.

There's certainly sufficient precedent for such turmoil. The DVD standard itself only emerged after last-minute negotiations and compromises between opposing camps. With the press and public harping on the possibility of another Betamax vs. VHS-type showdown, industry leaders have worked hard to find common ground on which to build a unified specification for home video and PC DVD. The ink on the DVD specification was hardly dry, however, when rifts began to appear.

The big breakup in the PC industry is over the specification for DVD drives that can read, write, and erase data. There's a lot at stake in this market segment. Not only does the winning standard stand to make inroads in data backup and removable near-line archive applications, but it could also become the basis for the next home-video recording and playback system, replacing the VHS recorders that are widely used today. But instead of two feuding camps fighting for this prize, there are four. This situation is even more puzzling, because some companies support more than one standard. Here's a quick overview of the different formats.

  • DVD-RAM. This was the first rewritable format approved by the DVD Forum, a consortium of companies that established the original DVD specification. Last summer, the group approved the 1.0 specification for DVD-RAM, a phase-change design that can hold 2.6GB of data per side on single- or double-sided disks. The single-sided disks will come in removable cartridges, but to protect the sensitive recording layer, double-sided disks will be permanently mounted in cartridges. At least one DVD-RAM drive manufacturer--Matsushita, which makes Panasonic products--promises that the drives will also be able to read PD/CD phase-change disks.

  • DVD+RW. The largest faction to split off from the original specification is led by Hewlett-Packard, Philips, and Sony which jointly developed the DVD+ReWritable format, or DVD+RW. Philips and Sony are also members of the DVD Forum and have expressed support for the DVD-RAM specification; they're backing the DVD+RW specification because they believe that it will be better suited for some applications. For instance, Philips has said that future generations of its DVD+RW drive could conceivably write CD-R disks, which means users could create content for the huge installed base of CD-ROM drives.

    DVD+RW's single-layer phase-change disks have more capacity than DVD-RAM disks--3.0GB per side--and use a higher-density recording process. The DVD+RW format does not rely on cartridges to hold the disks.

  • DVD-R/W. Pioneer has put forth its own specification, which it calls DVD-R/W. This is an evolutionary development based on existing CD-RW technology. It will use random-access media that hold up to 3.95GB. One of this technology's key characteristics is that its phase-change media have a higher reflectivity than DVD-RAM or DVD+RW media, and as a result, can be read in existing DVD-ROM drives and DVD players without modification. Because of this, DVD-R/W drives are not intended to be end-user products but instead are to be used by content developers to create disks that will be read on standard drives.

  • MMVF. The final contender in this list is the Multimedia Video File format from NEC, also known as MMVF. With a 5.2GB capacity on one side, the disks hold more data than the first versions of the competing designs. One important design goal was to be able to fit a full two-hour movie on one side of the disk. The decision about whether or not to enclose the disks in a cartridge has not yet been made, and drives aren't expected before late 1998.

    Continued...


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    From the March 10, 1998 issue of PC Magazine

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