Is Video Rental a Goner?

March 28, 1998 — -- In a few years, your VCR, CD player and computer disk drive may be as obsolete as your record player. All three components might be replaced by one DVD deck. Here's the scoop on the little disc that will shake your electronics world.

Digital versatile disc (of digital video disc) blurs the line between the computer desk and the home entertainment center. Since the DVD-ROM connects to a TV and a PC, this could start a harmonic convergence of home electronics. "The products that could come from this could be fascinating," says David Card, analyst at Jupiter Communications. Indeed, home computers might come out of the den and sit next to the big TV in the living room, and vice versa.

DVD machines retailing from $150 to $800 are popping up in computer and electronics stores from coast to coast. Hardware manufacturers are preparing to stop making CD-ROMs and make DVD standard equipment on all new PCs. Compaq, Gateway 2000 and others already install them on their high-end machines.

If DVD lives up to expectations, it could be as common as a VCR by the middle of the next decade. "The implications of CDs in 1982 and 1983 are the same as DVD today," says industry consultant Byron Wagner. "It promises to replaces technologies we've had for 20 years."

Right now, DVD players come in two flavors, though both play the same video or audio discs. One looks like a CD audio player and connects to TVs and home stereos. Its sister is the DVD-ROM, which installs like a disk drive inside a computer and runs software, movies and music. The computer units also can connect to a TV via an S-VHS jack on the adapter card. Thus, a DVD-ROM owner can watch The Fifth Element and Apollo 13 on a computer monitor and TV at the same time.

One current problem that is sure to change is available media. Only about 60 software programs and 755 movies are out on DVD. However, the new players play all audio and video CDs, including homemade CD-Rs (discs made on home CD recorders). As DVD players get cheaper, more products are sure to arrive. The $300 player sold today is more powerful than the $500 machine released a year ago.