The DVD Experience

by Owen Tran

Now you can choose from as many as 32 different subtitles and 8 separate audio tracks. Select pan and scan, letterboxes or special wide-screen versions of the same movie each with the push of a button.

Or, for a different perspective entirely, you could choose from as many as 9 discrete camera angles, and never have to worry about your children viewing inappropriate materials that Congress has been banning, because hardware players will include programm able MPAA limits.

You can get all this on one 5 inch disc originally called the Digital Video Disc, then changed to Digital Versatile Disk, and now, simply DVD with no official long name.

For the first time in the history of the electronics industry, members of the audio, video, computer and multimedia markets have banded together to create a new format. The industry-wide alliance of Toshiba, Matsushita, Sony, Phillips, Time Warner, Pionee r, JVC, Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric made this technological achievement possible.

DVD technology promises important benefits for consumers, the film and computer industries, and consumer electronics firms and represents a genuine revolution in Home Entertainment.

Revolutionary, because of its tremendous versatility, quality and performance -- a single DVD disc holds as much as 17 gigabytes of information -- 13 times the information contained within a conventional Compact Disc, yet its measurements are exactly iden tical to a CD. In addition, DVD players will play conventional CD audio.

A key design element permitting high density information storage and retrieval was the double sided bonded disc introduced by Toshiba. Reducing the substrate of each side of the disc to .6 mm allows a laser to read data with a higher degree of accuracy cr itical in a high density environment.

Further, a bonded disc resists warpage, improving tilt margins and offering a stable platform for data retrieval. The double sided nature of the DVD disc offers the capability to store two 133 minute feature length MPEG - 2 movies (one on each side) on a single disc.

The immense storage potential of DVD will allow new digital audio standards to be written, significantly extending bit rates and sampling frequencies. (See side bar: It's the Pits)

Compact, and affordable, offering timeless quality and versatile performance, the DVD Optical Disc will revolutionize the way we educate, communicate and entertain ourselves into the next millennium. It will also bring cross-platform applications and true multimedia to personal computing.

Taking a cross-platform approach, the new disc format will encompass a variety of areas. The video version, DVD, and the ROM version, HD-CD-ROM, will be developed for the 1996 release date under the same format name.

An audio-only version with the working name of Super CD and a games version, HD-CD Games, have been proposed for release at a later date.

In addition, an erasable HD-CD-E is expected in 1998. (An erasable CD-R called CD-E will enter the market by early 1996.) All versions will allow full data interchange between entertainment and computer-based media.

What is the bottom line? An exciting new product that will change the way we view prerecorded media is ready for release. The entertainment and computer programs of tomorrow will have faster access times, enhanced graphics and video capabilities, and bet ter sound.

The discs' data-storage capacities will allow interactivity that goes far beyond that in today's programs. The divisions between audio, video, computer and multimedia will become less obvious when all of them can be placed on one format.

In the meantime, acceptance of the new disc will take time. A new format is on the horizon, but we can expect to enjoy our present products for some time to come. Retail prices for these consumer DVD players are expected to range from $500 to $800, depe nding on the manufacturer.

DVD players may be pricey now, but in a few years, we can expect it to be as wildly popular as the soon-to-be-replaced VCR.