DVD Installed Base: 35 Million. Sounds Like a Great Distribution Format!

Recordable DVD is important to digital video editors because it gives us a high-capacity storage and delivery medium that's becoming a mainstay of home video systems all over the world.

Are you old enough to remember the format wars between Betamax and VHS? Even though Sony's Betamax consumer videotape format was technically superior to VHS in nearly every way, VHS won the war. Why? There was one point in the battle, a key window of opportunity, where VHS could record a maximum of six hours on a single tape, compared to Beta's five. The die was cast. It didn't take much to win that one -- just one small detail proved to be the crowning blow.

Now let's fast-forward about twenty years, to the present, where there's a new format war brewing, over recordable DVD formats. Recordable DVD is important to digital video editors because it gives us a high-capacity storage and delivery medium that's becoming a mainstay of home video systems all over the world. Since its introduction, DVD has been the fastest-growing consumer electronics device in history, with more than 35 million of the players currently installed. It behooves us as video editors (and some-time distributors) to nuzzle up to this delivery mechanism. We're dealing with volumes of data that usually won't fit on a CD-R, but when you're talking DVD, try 4.7 GB on for size. If all goes well, the format wars for recordable DVD will emerge with a clear victor, and the first example of mass convergence between your computer and your home theater will be at hand.

And, like the Beta/VHS skirmish of a past generation, there will be one small detail that decides this war, too: Compatibility with home DVD players. But that's not that small of a thing. Ask yourself this: Could there be a better delivery medium than one which already offers the high-quality picture and sound of rental DVDs to millions of consumers? Deliver them an edited digital video presentation that they can watch in their favorite easy chair, at a quality that resembles the master tapes, and you'll have happy customers.

But wait. This war isn't really in full swing yet. Sure, if you want to be one of the chumps who finances this revolution for all the rest of us, go ahead and spend $600 or more for a recordable DVD drive. That's actually not as bad as it was a few months ago, when even the cheapest DVD writer went for upwards of $3000. Worse than that, you could end up like I did in the Betamax days, and bet on the wrong horse. Before we jump into anything, let's take a look at the horses in this race, and then maybe that'll show you which nag on which you'd like to place your bet:

DVD-R was the first out of the gate, and with it comes a major disadvantage: It features write-once technology. Think back. If you got stuck with a CD-R and everybody else had CD-RW, you know about this flaw: Whatever you burn onto one of these babies is pretty much carved in stone. Making matters worse is the fact that since the blank disks are still way too expensive, not being able to use them more than once is an even more serious disadvantage. But the good news with this format is that its disks can be read on almost any home DVD player. And, it's said that future versions of this format will be able to support DVD-RW, so this could be promising. But when PR flacks tell me about what's happening in the future, my first instinct is to take a quick dodge-step aside, thinking that if that flack were Pinocchio, I would have been hit by a fast-growing nose coming right for me at light speed.

DVD-RAM is a rewritable format with a capacity of only 2.6 GB, but it also boasts double-sided disks, for twice the capacity. But putting this horse way back in the pack is its inability to be read by any home DVD players manufactured so far, and its annoying caddies that are a must with the double-sided disks. Even though the newest DVD-RAM drives have double-sided capacity of 9.4 gigabytes, forget it. This dog won't hunt.

DVD-RW is Pioneer's entry into the DVD derby, and a minor plus for this 4.7 GB format is its ability to play its disks on some home DVD players. And, as designated by the "RW," it can rewrite, too. It was introduced first with much ballyhoo as "SuperDrive," an internal drive on the Power Mac G4-733. But there's a catch: If you want to have a disk that's rewritable, not all home DVD players will play that disk -- sure, Pioneer's own DVD players will work, along with some others. The good news is, if you use a DVD-R disk in the drive, it'll play back on a few more, but not all DVD players. Apple has tested lots of DVD players for compatibility, and you can find that list here. As you can see, there are way too many exceptions here for it to deserve the name "SuperDrive." That's just more of the same "incredible, stunning, insanely great" Apple BS propaganda that we're all getting so tired of -- not so super after all.

DVD+RW seems to me to be the most promising of all, and that's where I'm going to place my bets. First, it has the backing of Hewlett-Packard, Mitsubishi, Philips, Ricoh, Sony, and Yamaha. The 4.7 GB disks can be played in any home DVD player. Add to these facts the growing list of digital video companies that are lining up behind the format (Dazzle Digital Video Products, MedioStream, MGI, NEC, Pinnacle Systems, Quantized Systems, Ravisent Technologies, Roxio, Sonic Solutions, Spruce, Ulead Systems, VITEC Multimedia, Inc., and Zapex Technologies), and you'll agree that this is the horse to pick.

Sheesh! Why does this have to be so complicated? Why can't there just be one format, and then everybody will be happy? Well, that's not the best way to do things in a capitalist society, where survival of the fittest rules the day. Call it technological Darwinism. Even though this technology may be currently stumbling out of the starting gate, it promises to run like Secretariat before it's time to move on to the next storage format. But again, let someone else pay these high prices for the first players. If you're like me, you'll wait until the after-Christmas sales, where I'm hoping to pick up a new DVD+RW drive for around $300.

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Steal This Song: Napsterization of Video?
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NAB 2001 Wrap-Up
OS X Released: Jump Into The Aqua, Or Off A Cliff?
Not Expensive Enough? Production House Chic
in-sync: Outta Sync?
Windows XP: She's Too Fat For Me
2001: A Look Ahead
2000: Looking Back
Christmas List 2000
What Are We? Video Editors or Computer Geeks?
What Ever Happened to HDTV?
Apple Stock Heads Toward Bottom of the Barrel
Editing for Content
Looking Ahead: The Age of Spiritual Editing?
SIGGRAPH 2000 Roundup
Fix it in the Mix?
NAB 2000 Wrap-Up
Mac? Just Another Pretty Face
The Digital Video Editing Crystal Ball
Thank-You Note to Santa: Thanks for Bringing These NLEs For Me
What's With This 24p Stuff, Anyway?
Digital Video's Pizza Syndrome
HD Video Editing is Here. Now.
Welcome to Digital Video Editing.com

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