Volume 4 (Aug 01, 2003)

DVD Recorders and NEC Electronics (1/2)

The Advent of a Recordable DVD System for the Home

* The figures in the parentheses show percentage comparisons with the same month the year before.
* According to preliminary video software sales figures from the Japan Video Software Association

The Japanese are well known for their love of TV. In fact, there are even some families in Japan who have more than one TV. So it was no surprise that the VCR (video cassette recorder), which enabled people to easily record their favorite TV programs, became pervasive throughout the nation. But it appears that the VCR now has a formidable rival - the DVD (digital versatile disc) recorder.

Whereas VCRs came with combined recording and playback capabilities from the very beginning, the introduction of DVD technology began with DVD players without recording functions. The immense popularity of home video game consoles equipped with DVD players has certainly played a part in the rapid diffusion of DVD technology. But perhaps the biggest reason behind DVD success has been the shift from the sale and rental of videocassettes to the sale and rental of DVDs, which are known to have higher-quality images and sound. According to the latest data (Graph 1) from the Japan Video Software Association, companies belonging to the said association have quoted sales of over two million videocassettes, while sales of DVDs have achieved an overwhelming lead with sales totaling nine million. It can now be said that DVDs have completely taken over the top position in the image media industry.

* Source: JEITA AV forecast WG "AV key item world demand forecast"

As the use of non-recordable DVD players as home video equipment continued to spread, recordable DVDs, with their large capacity as leverage, made their first appearance on the market as PC peripherals. DVDs, with a memory capacity of 4.7 GB - roughly seven times that of a CD - were tremendously well received by computer graphics creators and game programmers who regularly deal with copious amounts of data. At the beginning, since equipment and media of this kind came with a hefty price tag, the range of users was extremely limited. Once prices began to decline, however, PCs aimed at general users started coming equipped with built-in DVD recorders.

Capitalizing on the price reduction in recordable DVD drives, the DVD recorder at last made its debut in the audiovisual equipment market. DVD recorders have many advantages over VCRs-very little space is necessary to store disks containing image and sound software, there is no risk of degradation and rewinding is unnecessary because they are capable of random access. As long as prices continue to fall, it will only be a matter of time before DVD home recording equipment overtakes VCRs (Graph 2).

COLUMN:  DVDs: It all began with karaoke...

The development of DVDs actually began in an effort to create next-generation laser disks capable of recording high-quality movies two hours or longer in length. They first made their appearance on the market as commercial karaoke systems (karaoke is a music entertainment system that provides instrumental accompaniments for popular songs to which a person sings along by following the lyrics on a television screen). Following their introduction in the karaoke market, collaborative efforts were carried out with Hollywood, which possesses enormous amounts of content, to make progress toward DVD standardization, eventually leading up to the inception of the current international standard for single-sided, 4.7 GB DVDs.

Is it even possible to record TV programs onto DVDs?

The major difference between recordable DVD drives for PC use and DVD recorders utilized as home audiovisual equipment is that while all of the data handled by PCs is digital, and therefore the DVD drive need only be capable of recording digital data, the incoming data in the case of DVD recorders is TV analog data. Since DVDs only process digital signals, DVD recorders must be able to both convert the analog image and sound data to be recorded to digital data and compress it.

The technology used to compress image and sound data is the same as that used in the computer industry. Several methods have been developed and established as standards for image data compression, and the method that has been employed for DVDs is MPEG. While several standards have been developed (including MPEG-1 for video CDs, which has VHS video-level image quality; MPEG-2 for next-generation digital TV and DVD video, ATSC, etc., which is of S-VHS or high vision-level image quality; and MPEG-4, which is aimed at low-speed communication environments), the standard employed for DVD recorders is MPEG-2. Once TV broadcast data has been compressed into MPEG-2 format, it can then be recorded as DVD media.

When it comes to the heart of DVD recorders, look to NEC Electronics.