The History of DVD (Part 1)

Posted on 24 September 2010 by Stewart Wolpin

[Note: This story was written in 2007 and contains contemporary information and speculation that may no longer be accurate.]

Panasonic, Philips, and Pioneer are marketing the bejesus out of their respective recordable DVD decks. There are likely ads for one, two or all three companies and the varying DVD recordable offerings in the magazine you now hold in your hand.

The problem is, a disc recorded in one of these decks will likely not play in one of the others. Why? Each company wants to have the winning format. Winning the DVD recordable format war means market dominance. Market dominance means licensing dollars when other companies put out decks using your format. And, of course, Winning the DVD recordable format war means technology bragging rights. So, we get a DVD recordable Tower of Babel.

This format brouhaha also extends to high definition DVD recording. There are at least three different HD-DVD-R schemes being floated for consideration, and there’s no sign that a consensus will be reached any time soon.

It could be worse. The same sort of format war could have broken out when DVD itself was first being developed in the early 1990s. But largely through the efforts of one man over a two-year period, the warring DVD camps came to a consensus on a unified format and copy protection scheme, resulting in the one and only DVD we know today.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Several people have been either credited with, or claim credit for, “inventing” or being “the father” or “the godfather” of DVD. In reality, there is no “inventor” of DVD. Several people and companies contributed important technology and marketing bits to what was an obvious product.

Putting video on a disc is an idea older than television. In the late 1920s, British TV inventor John Logie Baird devised several Gramophone-based video disc schemes, and in 1935, such a system using a wax disc and yielding a whopping 30 lines of resolution, was actually demonstrated at London’s Selfridges department store.

It wasn’t until the 1960s that serious work on a consumer video disc system was started. At least four other development efforts were underway to develop a video disc system during the 1960s and 70s. A partnership between 3M and Stanford Research Institute resulted in the LaserDisc, introduced by Pioneer and Philips in late 1978. In 1981, RCA entered the video disc fray with its capacitance electronic disc system — CED — which used a stylus to electronically read peaks and valleys from grooves in a 12-inch disc, eerily reminiscent of Baird’s 50-year-old ideas. CED’s commercial failure three years later nearly destroyed RCA.

The 12-inch LaserDisc was not a hit with mainstream consumers either, and it seemed that VHS would remain the dominant format for prerecorded video. That changed with the introduction of the CD in 1982, its computer counterpart CD-ROM in October 1983 and Philips’ interactive video version CD-Interactive (CD-i) in 1987.

Capacity Squeeze

All these video disc formats used analog video that barely matched VHS in quality. Every consumer electronics engineer worth his pocket protector knew that the next logical step was putting digital video on the five-inch disc. There was one major problem: how do you squeeze enough multi-gigabytes worth of the digital video necessary for a two-hour movie on a 4.75-inch disc designed to hold just 650 megabytes?

The first solution was a higher density disc with tighter pit geometries. Engineers managed to shrink the microscopic pits that hold the digital signals on a poly carbonate disc, then moved the pits closer together. This shrinkage and compacting resulted in a capacity boost seven times that of a standard CD.

But even the increased disc space wasn’t enough. The digital video needed to be compressed as well. The solution came in 1988 out of a newly-formed subcommittee of the International Standards Organization (ISO), the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG). MPEG’s first digital video compression specification, MPEG-1, was capable of a 1- to 1.5 megabit per second bit rate, the same as CD, and was used to create the first digital video disc, the VideoCD.

Essentially, the MPEG schemes examined the digital video signal and eliminated redundant data, primarily in stationery backgrounds and static scenes. VideoCD, and its MPEG-2 successor, Super VideoCD, both of which hold around about an hour’s worth of video, is still a popular product in Asia, and VideoCDs will play on any current DVD player.

In the early 1990s, all the major consumer electronics companies had begun experimenting with the next generation of MPEG digital video compression algorithms, MPEG-2, capable of a bit rate of 10 mbps.

The most serious MPEG-2 and disc technical research was taking place at the Tokyo research labs of Toshiba, Matsushita and Sony, and at the Eindhoven, Holland-based Dutch labs of Philips. At Toshiba, the corporate effort was led by Koji Hase, who would become general manager of Toshiba’s DVD division, and the technical work was led by Toshiba’s chief technical officer Dr. Hisashi Yamada, although both lacked any real corporate mandate, at least at first.

“My mission was to create something that went beyond television and videos,” Hase recalled. “I found Philips’ new format called the CD-ROM, which can take 800MB. Now in those days, people were pretty happy with the floppy disc, with is 1.5MB. So my attempt to sell CD-ROM, which is 800 times bigger, was received as an outrageous proposal. I persuaded the industry that video files are pretty big and therefore you will need this, and that’s when the companies accepted it.”

Warner and Lieberfarb

While Toshiba, Matsushita, Sony and Philips and others were working on the technical problems, the more conceptual commercial groundwork was being laid by Warren Lieberfarb, president of Warner Home Video.

Warren Lieberfarb is not often described in flattering terms, but is admired for his DVD prostyletising and zealousness in seeing the format born healthy. After graduating from Wharton, he went right to the top, almost. In 1967 at the age of 23, he got a job as an assistant to a succession of Paramount Pictures presidents. After serving a stint as a consultant to videogame pioneer Atari, he moved to Warner.

In 1984, Lieberfarb was named president of the studio’s home video division, just as the video business was exploding. He was the right man at the right time, but he often rubbed people the wrong way. According to Newsweek, in his nearly 20 years at Warner, Lieberfarb had been fired twice for being too pushy. In 1989, for instance, he enlisted the help of Steve Spielberg and Martin Scorsese and boldly predicted that the LaserDisc would doom VHS.

Lieberfarb was concerned about the possibility that the next generation of digital television and video-on-demand would render VHS obsolete.

“Here I was, enjoying a nice life, running a billion-and-a-half dollar business unit and reading that we were going to be put out of business,” Lieberfarb recalled to a group of students at his alma mater of Wharton last March. “I decided that if we were going to compete, we had to change the rental model. My conclusion was you had to be able to sell movies at places where the customer does conventional shopping, like Wal-Mart, and make up in volume what you lose in margin.”

Lieberfarb also knew that the next generation home video format had to be higher quality and half the price of VHS tapes.

In 1990, Lieberfarb formed a collaboration with Philips on a next-generation disc format, but was unimpressed with Philips’ MPEG-1 efforts. In the early 1990s, Hase had met Lieberfarb as part of the negotiations that led to Toshiba buying a chunk of Time Warner.

In April 1992, Hase, knowing Lieberfarb’s desire for a next-generation video disc, finagled a half-hour meeting with Lieberfarb to explain Toshiba’s development efforts. The 30 minutes in Lieberfarb’s Burbank offices stretched to six hours, then spilled over to dinner at LA’s famous Morton’s steakhouse. Lieberfarb told Hase what he and the Hollywood community wanted in a next-generation disc, and Hase, knowing that Toshiba was helping develop MPEG-2, promised he could deliver.

“Warren had been looking for a next-generation format anyway,” Hase said. “He had approached Philips, and the answer they gave him was less than adequate. And then I showed up.”

The result was a partnership between Warner and Toshiba to develop a consumer digital video format, code-named “Taz,” after the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil character.

Back in Tokyo, Hase, now with a mandate from Lieberfarb, turned Yamada loose. Yamada consulted with engineers at Matsushita, which had developed a dual-layer technology that would help solve the capacity problems. In February 1993, Yamada traveled to LA and demonstrated the fledgling Taz to Lieberfarb. But Yamada’s prototype wasn’t compatible with music CDs.

Lieberfarb once again enjoined Philips, which owned core optical disc patents as the co-developer of CD, to make it a DVD development threesome. But in early 1994, Philips decided to partner with Sony on a slightly different digital video disc effort.

“Philips obviously thought that their technology was better,” Hase explained. “They must have thought their solution was the best. We did not agree, and that’s when we parted.” Lieberfarb saw this defection as betrayal.

“We laid out the specs for a single disc standard—the data capacity, wavelength of laser, variable rate encoding, the physical structure,” Lieberfarb told the Wharton crowd. “Philips and Sony agreed, but that turned out to be a subterfuge for delaying us and stealing our trade secrets… They had a compact disc and if you wanted to use it, you’d have to get a license from them, and any improvements you made belonged to them. They invited Matsushita to join them. They were out to make it impossible for us to compete. I announced that we would bring action against them for collusion, conspiracy and violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. When you are betrayed, you have to get back at the betrayers, right?”

Without Philips, Yamada, working with Warner’s senior vice president for technical operations Chris Cookson, finished what came to be known as the Super Density disc (SD).

SD was a dual-layer disc, essentially two .6mm discs bonded together with a clear glue to enable the laser to see through the top layer to the layer below. Each .6 mm disc could store 5 GB, which meant the dual-layer result held 10 GB. The bonding resulted in a disc less subject to warping. Dual-sided play would eventually double the capacity.

Sony and Philips, meanwhile, had come up with a single 1.2mm disc capable of holding 3.75 GB of digital video, and which used an enhanced version of the CD signal modulation scheme called EFM+. The Toshiba-Matsushita used a more experimental but more efficient modulation scheme. Sony and Philips also began working with 3M to develop its own dual-layered technology.

In May 1994, hoping to cut the legs out from under the Sony/Philips effort, Lieberfarb formed the Digital Video Disc Advisory Committee, comprised of Disney, Time Warner, Sony Pictures Entertainment, MCA, Paramount, MGM and Viacom. On September 21, Lieberfarb’s committee released a 12-point list of performance requirements for what the movie studios wanted in a next-generation disc format. These requirements demanded at least 135 minutes of playing time, room for three to five languages, multiple subtitles, multiple aspect ratios, Dolby Digital multi-channel sound, and a parental lockout feature.

SD complied with these stipulations. The Philips/Sony version did not.

Bell Ringing

Once DVD’s co-evangelizers-in-chief Hase and Lieberfarb teamed up, Philips and Sony realized it needed a high-powered partner of its own. Optical disc recording was a hot topic in the computer industry, and when you spoke about the computer industry, only three letters mattered: IBM.

In the spring of 1994, executives from IBM’s optical storage research facility in Tucson, AZ, got a call from their counterparts at Philips.

“We’re working on a second-generation CD-ROM for data storage,” said Philips, “and would IBM like to help us develop it?” IBM executive John Kulakowski was appointed point man for Big Blue, and enlisted the help of Dr. Alan Bell, a noted optical disc expert and, at the time, program manager in IBM’s Almaden Research Center and in San Jose.

The London-born Bell was sort of an accidental optical disc expert. After earning a Ph.D. in physics from Imperial College, part of London University, he came to the U.S. in 1973 on a post-doctoral fellowship at the Sarnoff Labs in Princeton, N.J. The fellowship was supposed to last only nine months, but he decided to stay to work for RCA. Within six month, he got involved in optical disc storage. In his five years at RCA, he worked on the ill-fated CED project but also collected 25 patents. After three months at Exxon, he took a job at IBM’s San Jose Almaden labs in 1982 as a researcher, specializing in magneto-optical systems. By the early 1990s, he was heavily involved in computer science application systems when he got the call from Tucson.

On May 19, Kulakowski and Bell met with Philips executives, along with representatives from Apple, Compaq and Microsoft, at Philips’ component group offices in San Jose. The computer executives got a preview of a new CD-based optical disc format Philips called high density compact disc (HDCD, not to be confused with the current high-end audio CD format). Philips wanted PC industry input for the data file system, capacity and error correction. The same group met again a month later at IBM’s San Jose offices, discussing the same PC-compliant technical nuts and bolts.

As far as IBM’s engineers were concerned, there was nothing overtly unusual about the request or the new format. There were dozens of potential next-generation optical disc formats floating around, and Philips’ effort wasn’t any more or any less intriguing than the others, including IBM’s. The computer company had no idea that Philips was developing a consumer digital video format, and according to Bell, Philips didn’t tell them.

At the time, the IT community didn’t concern itself with what Hollywood was up to, according to Bell. “No one had briefed us on that and the computer industry in those years had no idea of what was going on in Hollywood.”

During the summer, Bell received several calls from Philips and from his own bosses in Tucson for progress reports. Kulakowski finally asked Bell to take over as point man on the pending partnership for what IBM believed was simply another potential optical storage format candidate.

“My initial reaction was silence,” Bell said. “It didn’t look like an exciting thing to spend time on.” Without Bell’s enthusiasm, the Philips-IBM partnership went on a lengthy summer vacation.

Then, a week before Christmas 1994, all DVD hell broke loose.

Until the winter of 1994, few people outside the concerned parties knew of the development of a replacement for LaserDisc. But with Lieberfarb cornering the market on Hollywood content partners, and its own IBM partnership moribund, Philips and Sony decided to take their disc efforts to the court of public opinion.

On December 16, Philips and Sony issued a press release proposing specifications for a high-density multimedia CD, or MMCD. The release stated that the two companies had “begun discussions with motion picture companies and consumer electronics manufacturers with the aim of preparing an acceptable application specification for the ‘Digital Video Disc.'”

It was the press release heard ’round the world. The DVD format war had begun.

…to be continued. Click here to read Part 2.

 

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The History of DVD (Part 2)

Posted on 24 September 2010 by Stewart Wolpin

[Note: This story was written in 2007 and contains contemporary information and speculation that may no longer be accurate.]

In Part 1 of this History of DVD, we recounted the behind-the-scenes efforts of Philips and Toshiba to develop a next-generation digital video disc format in the early 1990s. Toshiba had tried to work with Philips, but the Dutch giant decided instead to team with its CD-development partner, Sony. Philips and Sony then developed a DVD format it eventually dubbed multimedia CD (MMCD).

In 1992, Toshiba, led by Koji Hase, formed an alliance with Warner Brothers and its DVD evangelist Warren Lieberfarb, along with Matsushita. The trio developed a format it called Super Density (SD) and lined up Hollywood studio support via a group called the Hollywood Digital Video Disc Advisory Committee.

Since Lieberfarb was collecting Hollywood support, Philips sought out IBM to gain the PC industry’s endorsement. However, IBM’s optical disc expert, Dr. Allen Bell, found little in the Philips proposal to get excited about.

Sensing it was about to be overcome by the Toshiba/Warner partnership, Sony and Philips went public. On December 16, 1994, the two companies issued a joint press release announcing MMCD. Philips and Sony had hoped the announcement would give them leverage with the studios. Instead, the release forced the two camps into a public heavyweight fight, with Bell as referee.

Shake Hands and Come Out Fighting

To bolster its best-format claim, the Dec. 16 Philips/Sony release noted that “a voluntary group of experts from major computer hardware and software companies — IBM, Apple, Compaq and Microsoft — are discussing extensions of the volume and file standard…”

That was semantically correct, but implied a certain imprimatur by a group that had only met twice. Even worse, Bell and his group didn’t even know that they had been looking at a consumer video product, much less endorsing one.

Oops.

The newly formed SD Alliance, consisting of Toshiba, Hitachi, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, JVC, Pioneer and Thomson, couldn’t very well concede the field to Sony and Philips. On January 24, 1995, the SD Alliance counter-punched with its own “no, we have the format” release. The announcement billboarded the actual support of Time Warner, MGM, MCA (Universal) and Turner Home Entertainment, and touted how the SD format “meets or exceeds all requirements…[of] the Hollywood Digital Video Disc Advisory Committee.”

Now that Philips had shined the light on them, Bell and his ad hoc computer group suddenly gained a new level of importance. Instead of simply advising on computer compatibility for a new optical storage format, it would play kingmaker for the next big home entertainment movie format. On February 10, the group met at the San Francisco Airport Westin and formalized itself under the generic name of the Technical Working Group (TWG), with Bell as chairman. Much to the stunned dismay of the attending Sony/Philips executives, the TWG decided it wanted a demonstration of SD before it made any recommendations.

The TWG clearly stated that it would endorse neither DVD format. It would merely examine the technical details of the two proposed formats and develop a list of non-binding recommendations for computer-based applications.

That was the public pose, anyway. The cold, business reality was something else.

Sony, Philips, Toshiba, Matsushita and Warner may have been tough guys in their respective neighborhoods, but IBM was, well, if you weren’t “IBM-compatible,” you weren’t in the computer business. And all the DVD contestants either were or wanted to be in the computer business. The unstated fact was that both the SD and MMCD camps would be forced to abide with whatever IBM and the TWG “recommended.”

And what IBM and the TWG wanted was a single, unified DVD format. Fortunately for all concerned, Bell would be the final arbiter.

“What I value most is that he’s fair, he’s very fair,” Hase stated. “He did not side with Toshiba, he did not side with Disney or Sony for that matter. He tried to be as fair as possible.”

On February 28, Bell and the TWG met Warren Lieberfarb, Hase, Taizo Nishimura, soon to be president of Toshiba, Warner’s chief technical executive Chris Cookson, and representatives from the other SD Alliance companies, at the Warner studios in Burbank. Cookson demonstrated SD with the bus crash scene from The Fugitive in full-blown surround sound. Bell and his TWG compadres were suitably blown away. Bell and the TWG had, of course, already seen MMCD. After several technical sessions, it was clear to Bell and the TWG that SD was the superior format.

On May 3, the TWG, by this time joined by Hewlett-Packard, issued a press release entitled “Requirements for Future High Capacity Compact-Disc Format Announced by Computer Industry Technical Experts.” In the release, the TWG listed nine “objectives” that the PC companies expected from a new optical disc format. Many of these “objectives” dealt with backward and forward compatibility with both current and future entertainment and PC-based optical disc products.

While TWG’s objectives seemed fairly obvious, the press release put additional pressure on both the SD and MMCD camps to come to an accommodation.

“The press began to ask each camp, ‘What do you think of the computer industry requirements and their demand for a single format,'” Bell recalled. “It put them on the spot.”

Neither the SD nor MMCD specifications included PC data storage compatibility, even thought that was why Philips had originally approached IBM. The solution came from the Optical Storage Trade Association (OSTA), via the TWG. OSTA had issued a file system specification called the Universal Disc Format (UDF), which specified how data files are arranged on a disc. OSTA contributed a modified UDF called Micro UDF, which would enable a disc designed to be played in a consumer electronics DVD player to also be able to be played in a PC.

The unification battle once again moved behind closed doors, but both sides continued to dug in. By late July, disgusted by the lack of compromise, Bell privately let everyone know that IBM was ready to endorse SD.

This threat prompted new high-level discussions between the camps. In August, Nishimuro made several covert visits to the nearby Sony offices in Tokyo. Faced with IBM’s threat, Sony finally agreed to compromise, but wanted one concession in order to save face. Sony asked that its EFM+ modulation scheme be used. Bell agreed.

With the outlines of a compromise in place, the MMCD camp diplomatically surrendered. On August 18, 1995, the TWG received a letter signed by Philips’s Key Modules Division Director Jan Oosterveld and Sony’s MMCD project leader, Teruaki Aoki. The two companies were prepared to support the goal of a unified proposal by combining the best approaches of each.

On August 24, at a press conference at the IFA show in Berlin, Sony and Philips made their concession public.

Not So Fast

At first, the SD Alliance was cool to the idea of the Sony/Philips compromise. After all, SD seemed as if it would be the winning format and was hesitant about backing down on the modulation question.

Bell and the TWG decided it was time for a final showdown. The annual OSTA meeting was scheduled for September 7-8 in Maui, Hawaii. Using the OSTA meetings as cover, the TWG met for six hours with each camp at the Sheraton in Waikiki. On the 7th, the SD camp tried to convince Bell and the TWG that its modulation scheme was better, and that the EFM+ modulation scheme would mean the loss of more than a quarter of a gigabyte in capacity. On the 8th, the MMCD camp argued that the SD modulation scheme was too experimental.

After its MMCD meeting, Bell and his TWG cohorts conferred over dinner. Around midnight, Bell and fellow IBM executive Vic Jipson wrote out a one-page technical report in longhand, which they faxed back to IBM executive Pat Toole at IBM headquarters in Armonk, NY. At 3am Hawaii time (9am eastern time), the two called Toole to discuss the report. Since no one in the PC industry cared about the extra quarter of a gig, Bell recommended accepting the Sony/Philips compromise. After consulting with Lieberfarb, Bell, Jipson and Toole sent a letter to Sony, Matsushita, Philips and Toshiba, informing all concerned that IBM would endorse the compromise format, and was “looking forward to a strong public announcement.”

The relieved MMCD camp quickly responded in the affirmative. The SD Alliance members, however, still weren’t so keen about the compromise. After faxing Bell that he was working on the SD Alliance’s response, Nishimura gathered together the seven members of the SD Alliance. Five voted yes, two voted against. Nishimura, however, wanted unanimity. After eight hours, Nishimura got his unanimous vote.

The SD Alliance’s made the decision public on September 15. But the press release petulantly complained that “partial modification of the SD format, which was designed on a consistent concept, is expected to bring about a number of new difficulties.” None that couldn’t be solved, however. The SD and MMCD engineers conferred, and the final compromise specifications were announced on November 13 at Comdex.

Not Ready For Prime Time

But there were still three problems. The first was what to call the unified format. In its September 15 statement, the SD Alliance proposed that the SD name be retained. Fat chance, although the name lived on in Toshiba’s DVD alphanumeric DVD model number nomenclature. As co-developers of the compact disc, the core technology at the heart of DVD, Sony and Philips wanted “CD” as part of the format name. Fatter chance. Bell’s recommended SMCD (Super Multimedia CD), but neither Toshiba nor Matsushita wanted “CD” in the name.

The answer, of course, had been staring everyone in the face. Lieberfarb had been calling the new format DVD – digital video disc – for more than a year, and the press had followed suit. But that didn’t suit the newly-formed DVD Forum or Toshiba in particular. Digital VIDEO disc implied that the format was for entertainment purposes only. There was nothing in the name that implied the format’s far more expansive computer capabilities.

“Mr. Nishimura was determined to unite the systems, otherwise there’d be no industry,” Hase remembered. “He picked up a dictionary from his drawer in his office and flipped through the pages to the letter ‘V’ and he stopped his finger and asked me, ‘What does “versatile” mean?’ I said, ‘multi-purpose.’ And Mr. Nishimura said, ‘Fine, then let’s call this digital versatile disc instead of digital video disc.'”

On December 8, 1995, the final unified digital versatile disc specifications were released, and Toshiba announced that the first players would go on sale the following September for between $500 and $700.

Well, not really. There was one last hurdle to overcome: pirates.

Against all odds, the monumental job of getting the cats and dogs of the consumer electronics and computer world to sleep together had been successful. But the Hollywood studios had no desire to face the kind of piracy rampant in the videotape world, especially since DVD would provide video pirates with a perfect original from which to make their black market copies.

Lieberfarb and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA, the ratings people), along with the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association (CEMA) wanted DVDs to be absolutely, positively copy-proof. The normally natural enemies of hardware and Hollywood ganged up on Congress to pass federal legislation making it illegal to copy DVDs. But the MPAA-CEMA legislation would have made it impossible for computer users to manipulate DVD content. The Information Technology Industry (ITI), representing the computer industry, made it clear that “there’s a lot more out there than just movies,” and vehemently opposed any legislation.

Once again, the DVD world rang for Bell. After all, the TWG had clout enough to force Sony, Philips, Toshiba and Matsushita to agree to one format. Surely it could use its clout to find and endorse a copy protection scheme.

In May 1996, Bell helped organize the copy protection technical working group (CPTWG). The CPTWG consisted of representatives from Hollywood, the consumer electronics industry, the PC/IT industry (represented by Bell), and the record industry. On October 29, 1996, after studying several proposals, the group endorsed a scheme from Matsushita called the Content Scrambling System (CSS)

Instead of scrambling the whole movie, CSS simply scrambles the beginning of each scene, which lowers the cost of encoding and decryption circuitry. The world was then divided into six “regions,” with different encryption codes for each region, designed to limit if not eliminate the black market trade.

Now DVD was a done deal. Once the copy protection scheme was finalized, it didn’t take long for hardware to hit the streets. In Japan, Toshiba released the world’s first DVD deck, the SD-3000, in November 1996. In the U.S., Pioneer, Toshiba and Sony flooded store shelves with decks in February 1997, followed a month later by the first software titles from – who else? – Warner Home Video. Sony-owned Columbia TriStar followed its it own slate of titles a few months later.

But what if you gave a format and nobody came?

Where Are The Titles?

It had been nearly five years since Warren Lieberfarb started lobbying for the DVD format. He’d spent a good deal of those five years cornering other studio executives, and convincing them to get on the DVD bandwagon when the time came.

Well, the time had come, the DVD bandwagon had pulled up, and – no one got on.

True, the Hollywood community supported SD, then the unified DVD format. But when DVD players became a reality, the studios froze. First it was fear of piracy until the CPTWG completed its work. Then, it was fear of yet another new format, and the fear of cannibalization of the still healthy videotape business. And on top of these fears, there was jealousy and greed at work. Many studios balked at the idea of paying Warners a few cents a disc in DVD licensing royalties.

Of course Warner and Sony’s Columbia TriStar were on board, along with long-time supporter MGM. But it wasn’t until the fall of 1997 that the next two studios, Universal and Disney signed on. “I did breathe a sigh of relief when I got the news (that Disney would embrace DVD),” Lieberfarb said in a September 1997 interview with Variety. That left Fox and Paramount.

Fox announced its first DVD releases in November, then held back. In mid-August 1998, Paramount titles finally hit retail racks, leaving Fox as the remaining hold-out. It took almost another year for Fox to get its movies onto DVD and into stores.

According to Newsweek, it took some major prodding by Lieberfarb and much backroom wheeling and dealing to get these two recalcitrant studios to release titles. Paramount signed on only after Warner agreed to a favored pricing plan for Blockbuster, owned by Viacom, which owns Paramount. And Rupert Murdoch agreed to release Fox titles on DVD only after Time Warner backed down in a bitter and highly-publicized dispute over airing the Fox News Channel on Time Warner cable systems.

DreamWorks announced its first titles in October 1998. And a week before Christmas 1998, Universal announced that the first movies directed by Steven Spielberg would be available on DVD. It wouldn’t be until spring 1999, however, more than three years after the format unification and more than two years since the copy protection problem had been solved, that DVD decks and DVD titles from all the major studios were available nationally. The most glaring DVD MIAs are the original Star Wars Trilogy, which likely won’t be released until after the third new Star Wars episode is released.

Ironically, the industry’s fear of a new format killing VHS have been realized. Last year, DVD players outsold VCRs, and rental outfits such as Blockbuster are now stocking more DVDs than VHS tapes. But the loss of the VHS business has simply meant new profits from DVD by both hardware vendors and the studios.

Ironically, after losing the format battle to Toshiba, Sony is winning the war. According to NPD Intellect, a market research firm that tracks consumer hardware sales, Sony sells nearly as many DVD players and Toshiba and Matsushita combined.

Sadly, times have changed. Both Bell and Hase now work for Warner Brothers, and IBM no longer has the muscle to force the recordable DVD format combatants to the bargaining table, much less negotiate a compromise. As a result, look for a long and confusing recordable DVD format war, a war that cannot possibly produce any winners. Only we, the consumer, are a sure loser.

Be thankful for small favors. At least we got DVD.

 

 

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Our 4G Future

Posted on 6 July 2010 by Stewart Wolpin

Last weekend I took the Sprint HTC EVO 4G down to Philadelphia, the closest 4G zone to New York City, to see what all the 4G fuss is and will be about – especially after Verizon launches its 4G LTE network on November 15.

My Philadelphia experiments tell me 4G will mean more than just faster Web page loading, faster video/music/photo uploads/downloads, faster pussycat kill kill. 4G speeds and the capabilities it enables will literally change our lives. Here are five 4G portents we’ve thought up so far.

1. ULTIMATE TETHERING. EVO includes MiFi-like mobile hot spot capabilities for up to eight simultaneous users. Once Verizon and AT&T launch their 4G LTE networks this year and next, respectively, I predict incorporating a mobile hot spot into phones will be the most emulated EVO feature – the Motorola Droid X has one to support up to five simultaneous users, albeit in suddenly sluggish 3G. Whatever Sprint, Verizon or AT&T may charge for phone-based mobile hotspotting will be worth it to not have to carry around both a phone and a wireless card on trips. A mobile hotspot in your 4G phone also kills the need to cough up extra dough for a 3G/4G iPad or whatever copycat tablet appears.

2. SHARE AND SHARE ALIKE. We’ll all become walking multi-user hotspots. If you have 4G connectivity, so can anyone around you. Sharing your 4G signal with your tablet/netbook-toting posse will be the next cool thing, especially as iPads and other tablets proliferate. I’m sure some hip expression or text-like acronym will spring up to indicate you either can offer 4G hotspot capability to a nearby friend or new friend (4G4U?) or beg a nearby 4G user to hooked you up (4GME?). Just make sure you take an extra power source with you – hotspotting is a real battery drainer.

3. CUTTING THE CORD. But mobile hotspot tethering won’t only happen on the road. Right now, we pay for cable or DSL internet connectivity at home and 3G for mobile Web connectivity. 4G is supposed to be 10 times faster than 3G, with average throughput of anywhere from 3 to 10 Mbps (compared to 3G’s 600 kbps-1.4 Mbps), and the next gen 4G will double that speed. That’s nearly as fast as many home broadband connections, certainly faster than DSL, and, for a lot of folks, reason enough to sever one suddenly redundant monthly bill.

4. 4G TODAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY. Remember this term: telehealth (or, mhealth). Along with 4G networks, all manner of new bio-sensors are coming to help monitor your body. Everything that a doctor needs you to come to the office to check can be monitored remotely, with data transmitted to your doctor – but the fatter 4G pipe is needed to handle this thick bio-metric data flow. Remote monitoring means fewer office visits, which means there won’t be the crush of new Obamacare patients to fight for an appointment. Bio-sensors with built-in radios can be built into stuff you already don – glasses, belt buckles, watches, bras, jewelry – to create your own on-person OnStar system. These 4G-fueled bio-sensors will maintain a constant communication with some Big Brother medical computer and your doctor to anticipate and react to medical emergencies it detects (“You’ve fallen and we’re sending someone to help you up”).

5. VIDEO CHATTING. Like iPhone 4, EVO has a front-facing camera. Unlike FaceTime, which only works over WiFi, EVO’s video chatting can be done over Sprint’s 4G network. Ostensibly, the front-facing camera is supposed to be for video chatting, but the killer app may be virtual reality gaming, raising narcissistic self-absorption to new heights.

What other life-changing apps will 4G enable? Verizon doesn’t even know. That’s why last fall the carrier created the 4G Venture Forum (4GVF), an incubation project to figure out exactly what kinds of “products and services that will harness” the faster 4G networks.

Check back in a year from now to see what crop had sprung from the 4G seed we’ve planted today.

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R U 3D ‘Ready’ Already?

Posted on 6 July 2010 by Stewart Wolpin

DirecTV last week launched its first three 3D channels, the first in what is likely to be a flood of new 3D broadcast sources. The question consumers are asking: how to watch these channels? Unfortunately, the 3D HDTV makers are hardly any help.

” -ready” –the scariest hyphenate in consumer electronics – is beginning to be indiscriminately slapped to the rear of “3DTV,” officially opening the 3DTV obfuscation season. Or, as Elmer Fudd would put it, it’s “3D-weady season,” which somehow sounds more appropriate.

The “-ready” suffix should be familiar. A decade ago, a burst of alleged HDTVs were confusingly labeled “HDTV-ready,” a suffix everyone agreed meant absolutely nothing, forcing the powers-that-be to precisely define “full” HDTV and ordered that HDTVs thus be labeled accurately.

As was the case with HDTV, the term “3D-ready” not only (and still) doesn’t mean anything, it further muddies what already is confusing folks about 3D. (At a Best Buy recently, I was fascinated by a guy staring approvingly at a Samsung 3D display showing Monsters v. Aliens – an he wasn’t wearing glasses.) It also makes it twice as hard for those of us who have to try and explain all this when we first are forced staunch the misinformation hemorrhage.

3D HDTV is almost simple. Right now, there is full HD 3D Blu-ray, which creates a 1080p frame for each eye, and half HD for each eye for broadcast, cable and satellite.  Full 3D HDTV can be achieved only with a 3D HDTV (not “ready” or “capable” or any other non-instructive descriptive suffix) equipped with HDMI 1.4a connectivity, connected to a 3D Blu-ray player with content encoded in MPEG-4 H.264 MVC (multiview video codec) and similarly equipped with HDMI 1.4. DirecTV sub’bers need nothing, nor will cable HDTVC sub’bers once cable providers start providing 3D channels. (Full 3D HDTV cable boxes are likely at least two years away.)

And, duh, to watch this full 3D HDTV, consumers will need to wear active shutter glasses.

But as with HDTV, manufacturers and retailers are taking a Looney Tunes approach to mis-explain their high-tech wares.

Take, for example, an email sent out to the media by a national retailer who shall remain nameless (okay, it was Sears) to announce the availability of two Samsung 3D LED LCDs and helpfully dispel three self-proclaimed 3D myths:

• Users are required to wear 3D glasses all the time.

Yes, Panasonsungshiba, spend millions of dollars on advertising and marketing to let people know they can take off their 3D glasses when they’re not watching 3D TV. Thanks, because I’m still wearing mine from when I watched Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song” 3D video on the Grammys telecast last month.

• After watching 3D and taking off the glasses, regular TV content is going to be fuzzy.

Millions worldwide have collectively spent hundreds of billions to watch Avatar in 3D, and not a single one of these Na’vi nerds found the world fuzzy after removing their 3D glasses. Blue, maybe, but not fuzzy.

• 3D TVs are going to be too expensive for the average household.

This is not a “myth,” it’s fact. Most American homes don’t have a large screen HDTV for a good reason: even at $800, 42-plus inch HDTVs are too expensive for most, and 3D sets are going to be at the top end of the large screen pricing scale (the cheapest Samsung set on the Sears’ site, a 46-inch model, is $2,600). And considering the hardships the economy is causing, trying to convince Mr. and Mrs. America that 3D HDTVs actually represent a good buy is, quite frankly, just plain insulting, like pouring lemon juice into an economic machete wound.

Worse, Sears’ initial Samsung 3D HDTV product page, consumers’ first introduction to actual 3D HDTV sales spiel, mentions nothing about 3D glasses – not where to get them, not how much they cost, not that they have to be $100 active shutter glasses not cheap cardboard red-green glasses for anaglyph 3D or the Polarized sunglasses they snuck out with from the movie theater – not even that they’ll need glasses. Imagine the first automobile salesmen neglecting to mention buyers would need to buy something called “gasoline.”

Then there’s Sears’ “Making 3D Happen” FAQ page. First, there are headers for “Native 3D,” “Virtual 3D” and “2D.” “Native 3D”? “Virtual 3D”? I’ve been writing about 3D for more than a year, attending 3D demos and conducting intense Q&As with industry execs over the last few weeks, and I’ve never heard these terms. And I’ve not seen a single 2D-to-3D conversion that improved upon century-old stereoscopic postcard viewer. Knowing the difference between Native and Virtual 3D is not only not a FAQ, it’s a INOTATWEAI (It Never Occurred To Anyone This Was Even An Issue, pronounced “ino-TOT-way” if you’re curious).

And the first product descriptive term Sears’ FAQ uses? “3D-ready HDTV.”

Cue Elmer.

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Look, Ma, No Wires!

Posted on 6 July 2010 by Stewart Wolpin

3D is getting all the attention in the A/V world these days, but anyone who’s courageously dived behind their AV stack has dreamed of a day of not encountering a tangled spaghetti mess.

Awaken from your dream. There are three such wireless interconnect solutions emerging: Wireless HD (WiHD), Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI) and WiGig. A handful of companies are backing several of these: Hitachi, LG, Samsung, Sharp and Sony are all listed as supporters for both WiHD and WHDI, for instance; LG, Samsung and Panasonic are supporters of all three. Chip makers also are doubling up; Broadcom and Intel both are supporters of WiHD and WiGig.

While all three consortiums seek to provide a wireless uncompressed 1080p HDMI connection, each uses slightly different technologies and envision slightly different usage cases. And considering the acronym overlap, it’ll be nearly impossible to keep them all straight.

WiHD has the simplest mission – provide a wireless HDMI replacement over the recently unlicensed 60 GHz band.

WiGig also operates in the 60 GHz band, but is a more multi-purpose and interoperable standard. An extension of standard 802.11 WiFi with complete backward compatibility, the goal of WiGig is to provide a higher bandwidth – 7 Gbps, 10 times faster than 802.11n – wireless connections for high-bandwidth functions such as transferring HD video from a camera to a PC.

Both WiHD and WiGig are short-range (10 meter) same-room technologies. Neither is strictly line-of-sight; if you stack your A/V gear underneath or next to your HDTV, the wireless stream will bounce off nearby walls to your HDTV to complete the wireless circuit. Implementation in larger rooms, therefore, could be challenging.

WHDI is a slightly different wireless animal; it aims to connect all devices to any display in your home. WHDI operates in the more flexible 5 GHz band (just like 802.11n), so does not require line-of-sight and has an up-to 30-meter range, expanding equipment placement flexibility to multiple rooms. Earlier this month, the consortium announced its next specification, due later this year, would support 1.4a 3D capabilities.

But HDTV manufacturers have been shy about all of the wireless possibilities. Sony, LG and Panasonic all announced WiHD-enabled HDTVs but none are widely available, and Vizio was due to a WHDI model but, as far as we can tell, it’s not out yet. All require the purchase of a separate wireless kit consisting of a wireless dongle for the TV and a transceiver STB, priced around $400.

The WiGig wireless HDMI specification isn’t due until the end of this year at the earliest, and the first WiGig-enabled products of any kind likely won’t be in stores until 2011.

I wish TV makers would be jumping all over this. Even though confusion is likely to ensue between WHDI and WiHD, practical wireless HDMI is bound to be far more popular than 3D.

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Where’s the Avatar 3D Blu-ray?!

Posted on 6 July 2010 by Stewart Wolpin

If I were a geek or a nerd (and I’m both, but not yet a gleek), I would be selling my blood and other bodily fluids, cashing in every bit of loose change around the house and maxing out my weary credit cards to get myself a 3D HDTV and a 3D Blu-ray player so I could drool over Avatar at home on 3D Blu-ray. And I’ll bet millions of other blue-painted geeks and nerds would be tramping down to Best Buy and other big box retailers to do the same.

One problem. There’s no 3D Blu-ray version of Avatar. Why? Two words: Fox, greed.

Panasonic has been flaunting its relationship with James Cameron for nearly two years. At the 2009 and 2010 CES, Panasonic played video of Cameron extolling the virtues of 3D and how he valued his relationship with the company. Observers would have bet their farms (okay, I would have bet my farm, if I owned one) that Panasonic would start selling its 3D Blu-ray and 3D HDTVs to coincide with the home video release of the 3D Blu-ray of Avatar.

But sans a 3D Blu-ray Avatar, I’m guessing no one will sell as many 3D HDTVs or 3D Blu-ray decks this year as they could have.

It’s hard to fault Fox Home Video for holding back a 3D version of Avatar. The 2D version sold 6.7 million units in its first four days of release, 2.7 million on Blu-ray, both records, and both versions remain among the top five sellers six months after its April 22 release. And Fox seems quite satisfied with this bounteously blue status quo. In fact, Fox will dip into geek wallets a second time when it releases a special edition DVD and Blu-ray this November. The growing infamous home video third dip, a 3D version, hasn’t even been scheduled and likely won’t be out until sometime next year.

But this long-term thinking is paradoxically short-sighted. Avatar is the 3D killer hardware app. Instead, by waiting until 2011 for a 3D Blu-ray Avatar, Fox pushes back 3D Blu-ray sales potential not only for themselves but other suddenly 3D-happy studios and foe 3D hardware makers, and leaves us Na’vi lovers disconnected from the 3D Tree of Souls. Well done, Mr. Murdoch!

It’s clear Panasonic didn’t quite have the unobtanium, metaphorically speaking, to get Fox to release a 3D version of Avatar to support the 3D hardware launch. One reason I’ve heard for Fox’s delay is that 3D authoring tools aren’t up to snuff. I find that hard to believe. First, earlier this year Cameron was quoted as saying he believed a 3D Blu-ray version would be out in the fall. He must have felt it was totally doable, but was quickly contradicted by the suits at Fox. Second, it’s hard to believe Cameron and crew are pickier than Pixar, which already has released <i>Up</i> on 3D Blu-ray.

More likely, Fox is being conservative (what a shock), waiting for a critical mass of 3D HDTVs and 3D Blu-ray players to be sold in order to ensure the 3D Avatar Blu-ray makes as big a noise as the 2D versions, or at least doesn’t land with a dull sales thud. But this creates the old chicken-egg game of chicken that hardware makers and content providers have been playing since the VCR first came out in 1976. You put out hardware first. No, you put out content first. Hardware first. Content first. Wabbit season. Duck season.

In the meantime, geeks and nerds like us will be blue until we can get Na’vi blue Blu-ray in 3D next year.

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If you build it, they will videophone

Posted on 6 July 2010 by Stewart Wolpin

Apple’s FaceTime is stoking the flames of videophoning passion, and could help video telephony finally engulf the living room (to complete the suddenly ridiculous fire metaphor).

Yes, futurists have been prognosticating ubiquitous videophones since, well, since futurists have been prognosticating; in 1964, the Bell System actually initiated a short-lived video telephone service between New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, and Dr. Heywood Floyd famously called his daughter on a space station pay video phone in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But all videophone efforts, either via standalone phones or TV add-ons, meant the purchase of two phones (it takes two to video chat) to create a critical mass of videophoning households.

Why hasn’t widespread videophoning happened? It’s been postulated that we phone chatterers simply wanted to be heard and not seen. Bull donkey. We love webcam video chatting on our PCs. Why? We didn’t have to buy any special equipment. It’s nearly impossible to find either a laptop or desktop PC without a built-in Web cam; it’s this “if you build it in, they will video call” that is the secret to living room and mobile video telephony.

(Curiously, I’m stunned Apple didn’t make FaceTime an extension of iChat so anyone with at least a webcam-enabled Mac could make and receive video calls from the 4. One has to believe such a link will be established at some point, or that Skype will create a video call app, if Apple let’s them have access to the camera API, or that AT&T’s network will become robust enough to enable cell video calls. But we’ll probably have to wait until 4G LTE before this happens. But I digress.)

Skype is supplying this Phone of Dreams solution for the living room. A slew of net-enabled HDTVs from LG and Panasonic include Skype-powered high-definition videophone capabilities built-in – but you have to buy an LG- or Panasonic-specific webcam, each of which will have four built-in microphones, for an extra $100.

Needing an add-on webcam should be a temporary situation. But neither Panasonic nor LG has indicated next-gen HDTVs will include a webcam and microphone array built into the bezel like on a PC. They’re all afraid it’ll drive up the price on their sets, making them less competitive to price-sensitive consumers. Supposedly, Toshiba’s pending CELL TV will include a built-in webcam for videophoning, presumably using Skype, although the company has yet to officially say so either way.

Eventually, though, all Web-connected HDTVs will include a built-in webcam for videophoning. And as people grow used to videophoning, landline phone makers, seeking any way to boost sagging sales, will launch Skype-powered video phones for other rooms in the house, and LTE-powered cellphones will include forward-facing cameras to enable video calls.

Within a decade, everyone could have videophones in each room of the house, and enable a whole new way of looking – literally – at phone sex.

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Sezmi Sez, Cut the Cable. Sez Me, No So Fast!

Posted on 6 July 2010 by Stewart Wolpin

Sezmi wants to take advantage of the national hatred of cable monopolies by offering a seemingly all-inclusive cut-the-cable TV solution. An interesting idea – geez, I’d love to tell Time-Warner where to put their ancient STB – but Sezmi has a black hole in the middle of its idea.

Basically, Sezmi gives you a TiVo-like set-top box with a 1 TB DVR and a bookshelf-speaker-sized antenna that receives both local and cable channels, including premium fare such as HBO and video-on-demand, via a combination of over-the-air and broadband, for a Wal-Mart-like price of $20 a month.

Sezmi sez it’s got around 10,000 customers in 10 cities and is building its portfolio of channels from 23 to nearly 50 by years’ end.

But to paraphrase Max Bialystock, in order for this scheme to work, you need a broadband internet connection. You could get DSL (barely faster than wireless 3G), but the only real high-speed option, unless you have AT&T U-verse or FiOS, is from – your local cable monopoly.

Which sort of puts us right back where we started.

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Ebook v. Tablet PC: Who cares?

Posted on 6 July 2010 by Stewart Wolpin

An ebook price war erupted between Amazon and Barnes & Noble last week, each hoping to pick off literate consumers who find iPad too pricey.

My response to this ebook ballyhoo and hoopla is folderol and balderdash. Ereaders are likely to be this year’s version of personal navigation device (PND), which enjoyed their own short-lived ballyhoo and hoopla period but have been replaced by new generations of smart and superphones equipped with cell-assisted GPS.

Simply put: buying a dedicated ereader just makes no sense, financially or functionally.

Yes, iPad is more than twice as expensive as a Kindle, Nook or Border’s new Kobo ereader. But this is temporary. Next-gen iPad’s are likely do more for less – that’s the way it’s gone historically for both iPod and iPhone. And once Android-powered tabs show up later this year, prices will drop even more, further shrinking the ereader-tab PC price differential.

But you may not need either an ereader or a tab PC to eread – you likely have one already: there are multiple ereader apps, including Kindle, Barnes & Noble and Kobo for iPhone/iPod Touch, Android, and BlackBerry. With their 3.5 to 4.3-inch screens, superphones make super ereaders.

It goes without saying, of course (than why am I saying it?) that tab PCs and smartphones do a lot more than serve as a portable library, certainly enough more to justify their higher price tag.

Ereaders have definitely sparked a revolution in how people acquire and read books. Thanks, Amazon! But already purchased smartphones and tab PCs are better.

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The Great HDMI Cheat

Posted on 6 July 2010 by Stewart Wolpin

If I were an A/V sales person, I would likely lose my job sometime this summer because I would try to talk you out of buying an HDTV, 3D Blu-ray player or A/V receiver (AVR).

And, quite frankly, every sales person with a conscience should follow me to the unemployment line.

Why? Because you’d would be buying your HDTV and AVR under false pretenses, believing you’re getting a complete, state-of-the-art product.

You’re not.

All new HDTVs and AVRs are (or should) be equipped with HDMI jacks supporting version 1.4a. Ostensibly, the 1.4 standard, adopted at the end of last year, enables the transport of 3D signals from a Blu-ray player through the AVR to the HDTV. The spec was upgraded to 1.4a (and never has a lower case “a” been more important) at the end of February to support the cornucopia of broadcast 3D schemes.

Aside from 3D support, HDMI 1.4a also includes three other benefits: Audio Return Channel (ARC), which enables AVRs to pass audio signals back from the HDTV through HDMI to the amplifier (especially handy to listen to Pandora or Rhapsody streams eminating from a networked HDTV in glorious stereo or surround, or to more easily connect a soundbar), support for future 2K and 4K ultra HD standards, and, something called HDMI Ethernet Channel (HEC), the capability to pass Ethernet signals from HDMI 1.4 connected device to HDMI 1.4 connected device –all you need is one Ethernet connection to any of your HDMI 1.4 devices to bring Ethernet to ALL your HDMI 1.4 connected devices.

The problem is, current HDMI 1.4a product support only 3D and ARC. Chip sets included 2K/4K and HEC support are in production now, but I’m told by several manufacturers that AVRs won’t have complete implementation of all HDMI 1.4a features AVRs until next year.

Which means all new HDMI 1.4a gear made and sold in the next 6-8 months will soon be obsolete.

Oh, cool your over-reacting, mock-indignitied jets, I hear you say. It’s not that big of a deal, you scoff. Au contraire, my rationalizing friends.  We are always complaining about how nearly instantly obsolete our gear is. Well, we KNOW this current generation of A/V equipment will be obsolete and we KNOW what the next gen will offer. See how you’d feel after spending $3,000 on a new 3D home theater rig, only to find out eight months from now that you’re missing a critical piece manufacturers knew about but didn’t bother to tell you about.

So, don’t say you weren’t warned.

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