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.
Is Video Rental a Goner?
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.
Sharper than VHS
One advantage of DVD is the picture quality. It's more than twice as sharp as a VHS tape, with 500 lines of resolution instead of 240 for VHS and 450 for laserdisc. Since DVDs don't use magnetic tape, they also don't deteriorate under heavy use. That means the kids can watch the same copy of Aladdin until puberty.
A typical DVD disc also adds menu-driven features now only found on big laserdiscs. These include the original movie trailers and running commentary. On one of the latest discs, James Bond fans, for example, can watch Goldeneye in wide-screen or pan & scan formats. They can also watch the movie with the soundtrack in English, French or Spanish. Multilingual viewers can even watch the movie in French while reading subtitles in Spanish.
The digitally-mastered discs also contain indexes that let viewers find a favorite scene or zip ahead to the big climax. Some discs even let viewers choose camera angles, letting them get a special glimpse of a concert or sporting event. The sound quality on discs is similar to their CD cousins and is compatible with Surround Sound systems like Dolby Pro Logic. Some DVDs even include karaoke tracks.
Sorry, No Screen Grabs
But don't expect to grab images and entire movies off discs and send them across the Internet. DVD-ROM drives don't allow pictures to be saved to disk or screen-captured by people watching movies on their computers.
"Hollywood's really paranoid about that sort of thing," says Theresa Pulido, spokeswoman for DVD-ROM manufacturer Creative Technology. Two clouds hanging over DVD are the small number of available titles and infighting among the corporations that own parts of the technology, like Sony and Panasonic. Card, the analyst at Jupiter, says these problems could hurt sales and stunt DVD's growth, making it into merely a bigger, badder CD-ROM. "This Christmas will be the moment of truth," he says.
Expect the next big thing in DVD technology to be recordable discs. New DVD-R and DVD-RAM machines can record data. DVD-R, like recordable CDs, can only write on a disc once. A user making a mistake is left with a high-tech Frisbee. DVD-RAM is rerecordable and coming to stores later this year. While they will cost at least $500 initially, that price is certain to come down. If enough people buy new recorders instead of VCRs, the era of VHS could come to an end.